Hard Light

© 2010 by Kevin Crawford

ISBN: 978-1-936673-03-2
Cover art by Ilsur Gareev.
Interior art by Innovari and Serg Zastavkin.
Some maps made with Dungeonographer,
http://www.dungeonographer.com/

The red giant Perdurabo burns at the center of the Hard Light
system. It casts its lethal radiance out from the molten slag-droplets
of the inner system to the charred debris that circles at the outer
rim. It is monstrously hostile to all living flesh. The radioactivity
emitted by the star is enough to burn through ship shielding in a
matter of days and the only safety lies in hiding behind the scorched
bulk of some lonely stone.
Brightside Station was built here fifty years ago, its materials brought
up from the half-melted planetoid of iron and rock that serves as its
shield against Perdurabo. It was a remarkably risky investment by
the Geostellar Mining Industries, but Perdurabo offered wealth as
well as death. The star emits tiny particles of novium amid its sleet
of radiation. This rare substance is vital for the maintenance and
upkeep of many pretech manufacturing devices, and GMI needed
Brightside to serve as a refinery for its catcher drones.
The banks in GMI’s home system were dubious about the project
from the start, yet GMI’s charismatic chairman, Jingfei Tang, was
able to convince them that their loans were well-placed. She and her
corporation would be rich beyond imagination once the novium
shipments started to come in.
The banks believed it, too, until a routine audit demonstrated that
Tang’s son Gui had gutted GMI’s accounts in a ham-fisted attempt
at embezzlement. Despite his protestations of innocence, the banks
moved in to foreclose on the newly-completed Brightside Station.
As they knew nothing of mining and were in desperate need of
a payoff to support the loans they’d made, they left the existing
station director in place. Director Yash Dutta was god over his tiny
Purgatory so long as he kept the novium shipments coming in.
It was just as Dutta had planned when he arranged to frame Gui Tang
for the embezzlement. Once the money was in hand, he expected to
skip Brightside for more civilized systems... but he hadn’t counted
on Jingfei Tang’s family. Several dozen relatives made it very clear
to Dutta that they were going to kill him for what he had done,
whether or not they had proof sufficient for a court of law. Dutta’s
station became his prison, with him as his own chief jailer.
For fifty years, Dutta has kept Brightside operating in the teeth of
every disaster and hardship that Hard Light could offer him. He calls
Perdurabo “The Beast”, and two generations of station personnel
follow him in the name. It is an enemy, a hostile, ravening god of
white light and killing radiance, but they send their catcher drones
out into the burning clarity every day to filter out the precious
particles of novium. For some, it’s the only life they’ve ever known.
Light Without End
The novium shipments are rich, but not nearly as rich as Jingfei
Tang had anticipated. It is a struggle to make the bank payments,
but Dutta works feverishly to ensure they are met. If he fails, he and
the rest of the station’s inhabitants are sure to be shipped off it to
parts unknown as the station is sold to some hungrier consortium.
For many of the inhabitants, such a thing would be a hardship. For
Dutta, it would be a death sentence.
But novium is not the only thing of note in Hard Light. Two years
ago, a wayward novium transport was arriving under the shelter of
the outer rim debris when their scanners picked up an anomalous
asteroid. The captain dared to go closer, and an away team discovered
that the asteroid had been carved out by ancient aliens. Within the
pressurized interior, strange artifacts of glass and mineral fibers were
found alongside the desiccated body of a humanoid alien lying in
an ornate casket of transparent pseudo-quartz. A tablet within the
sepulchre gave the astronomic coordinates of more of the well-
hidden “sky tombs”.
Since then, explorers and adventurers from nearby systems have
occasionally made pilgrimages to Hard Light in order to plunder
these ancient tombs. A representative from a major research
combine has even set up permanent shop on Brightside simply to
buy the takings from these ancient crypts. Still, the work exacts its
own price in dead. More than one team of explorers has been lost
forever in the depths of a sky tomb, and there are persistent tales of
pirates and worse lairing in the pressurized safety of a looted tomb.
A few of the ancient rocks are known to be inhabited by hermits
or small, reclusive communities that care little for outsiders. They
do minimal trade with Brightside Station for the necessities they
require.
Within the station, tensions are growing. The bank always seems
to be demanding more production, and Dutta drives his workers
hard to make the quota. Some are beginning to grumble, and while
transients are willing enough to leave on the next transport ship,
those born and raised on Brightside are beginning to consider what
life might be like without Dutta as Director.
These murmurs are cultivated by Roland Lomax, the station cargo
chief and a bitter enemy of Dutta. He came here to Brightside one
step ahead of out-system law, and he has no more future in the
wider world than Dutta does. Yet he knows the dark truth behind
Brightside Station’s origins, thanks to a chance discovery by one of
his pirate comrades. He holds the proof tightly, just waiting for the
next novium transport to dock so he can show it to a bank auditor.
If he plays his cards right in the meanwhile, the station will have no
choice but to accept his promotion to Director. Then things will be
run more to Roland Lomax’s liking....
3
Brightside Station
The station itself is built along the old Bannerjee Twelve structural
lines, a construction pattern popular since pre-Scream days for its
cheapness, reliability, and ease of maintenance. The fittings aren’t
especially modern, and the living is primitive compared to more
advanced stations, but the reliability is vital in the face of Hard
Light’s special dangers.
The station is an ovoid cylinder in shape, its habitable decks divided
into three levels. The artificial gravity generators and maneuver jets
dominate the “bottom” of the station, below the lowest habitable
deck. Above them is the “lowdeck” with the cargo hold, station
control room, docking bays, and refinery operations. Above that
is “middeck” with station offices and businesses. At the top of the
station is “highdeck”, with the hydroponic bay, cafeteria, living
quarters, and fusion power plant.
Navigation on the Station
Brightside is relatively stationary above the dark side of the planetoid
Aegis, with the bulk of the iron-carbon worldlet serving to shelter
the station from the Beast’s radiation. This positioning makes it
difficult to use conventional dirtsider terminology like “north” or
“south”, so the natives of Hard Light use a different set of directions.
Aboard the station, “up” and “down” refer to the levels of Brightside
Station, “fore” refers to the direction in which Aegis is orbiting,
“aft” is the opposite, “inby” is toward the Beast and “outby” is away
from the star. The orientation of the station means that “inby”
corresponds to conventional north on the maps, “outby” is south,
“fore” is west, and “aft” is east.
Station Systems
Several systems are vital to maintaining life aboard Brightside
Station. Combat aboard the station runs the risk of damaging some
or all of these crucial systems, and not all of them can be repaired
using only the station workshops.
The most immediately important system is the atmosphere refresher.
The Brightside relies on the highdeck hydroponic bay to filter and
freshen the atmosphere of the station, and the bay can support up to
200 inhabitants at once. Mechanical backup scrubbers are available
in case something kills off the hydroponic bay, but the scrubbers are
old and cantankerous, and require constant tending to function. It
is impossible to mine or refine novium while tending the scrubbers,
and it takes at least three months to regrow the hydroponic bay
from seeds.
Food is also supplied by the hydro bay, with fruits, vegetables,
and meat-analogs sufficient to feed 200 inhabitants indefinitely.
Emergency rations sufficient to feed the same number of occupants
for six months are kept in the cargo bay.
Water is used both for drinking and for reaction mass for the
station’s maneuver thrusters. The majority of it is kept in a vast tank
running along the outside of the station’s hull, though emergency
stores are also kept in tanks on middeck and highdeck. The station’s
recirculators are fairly efficient, but heavy position corrections or
a tank rupture may force the station to find and harvest an ice
4
asteroid ahead of schedule. Locating and assaying such asteroids is
dangerous, and Dutta will prefer to enlist expendable outsiders to
do the work.
The maneuver jets are old and primitive, but sufficient for the small,
regular corrections the station requires to remain safely on the dark
side of Aegis. If something wrecks the jets, however, the station will
begin to drift out into the direct light of the Beast, and will leave the
safety of Aegis’ shadow in 72 hours. Once beyond the protection of
the planetoid, the murderous radiation of the inner system will turn
the station into a glowing tomb within 24 hours.
The refinery system is vital to producing the novium required by
the bank contract. The entire process is fraught with radioactive
buffer fluid, high energy extraction filters, and globules of molten
lead. Any serious accident in the refinery section of lowdeck is apt
to produce spectacular injuries.
The artificial gravity generators are beneath lowdeck, in the service
level next to the maneuver jets. The station was originally designed
to cope with periods of null gravity, but the decades of reliable
operation have left the inhabitants careless. If the gravity cuts out
without warning, the corridors and bays of the station will be filled
with unsecured objects and floating globules of liquid.
The station’s power comes from a fusion plant on highdeck. Ideas
of using solar catchers were mulled briefly during construction, but
nothing sufficiently cheap could survive constant exposure to the
Beast’s radiation. If the fusion plant goes down, emergency power
can run the station’s hydro bay, artificial gravity, and maneuver jets
for 72 hours before things start to go downhill. By cutting everything
except life support to highdeck and crucial maneuvering, the station
can limp along for six months.
Finally, the station is equipped with a cruiser-class gravcannon for
discouraging the attention of pirates and other unsavory sorts. The
cannon is mounted on a sliding turret, so can fire in any necessary
direction. A saboteur who gains control of the gun through the
station bridge can even open fire on ships docked at a mooring stud
or the umbilical dock.
Mining the Novium
Novium extraction depends on the catcher drones, a fleet of two
dozen small, unmanned system boats filled with highly radioactive
buffer fluid. These drones are programmed to fly out into the Beast’s
light, absorb the incoming novium particles, and then return to
Brightside Station. They dock at long iron mooring studs, where
some unlucky miner in a heavily-shielded vacc suit then hooks up a
transfer umbilical to pump out the fluid.
Within the station, mining chief Mary Tomlinson oversees the
extraction of novium from the buffer fluid and its eventual recycling
back to the catcher drone. The particles are then embedded within
fifteen-kilo lead ingots. The ingots easily sell for 2,500 credits apiece
back on more civilized worlds, and the mining station produces an
average of two each day. Transport ships chartered by the banks
arrive three to four times a year to take off the ingots.
The entire process is dirty, dangerous, and high in radiation.
Medical chief Suyin Indrani is an old hand at repairing radiation
damage in miners, but even she has her limits, and hooking up the
catcher drones and handling the buffer fluid are duties often given
as punishment to troublemakers.
Laws and Regulations
Yash Dutta is judge, jury, and final court of appeals for lawbreakers
on Brightside Station, though most minor matters are handled by
his security chief, Livingston Roy. Most of the rules aboard the
Brightside are nothing more than common law prohibitions against
assault, theft, vandalism, and other predictable bans. Petty violators
are fined 50 credits or forced to work a few days doing umbilical
hook-ups for the catcher drones. Repeat troublemakers might face
a public whipping. Serious criminals responsible for murder, rape,
or the endangerment of the station’s vital systems can expect to be
pitched out of an airlock, though the lucky ones might simply be
beaten, imprisoned until the next transport ship arrives, and then
exiled off the station.
Wearing armor or bearing weaponry is forbidden on Brightside
Station for everyone except the department chiefs and Livingston
Roy’s security staff. Knives and tools are overlooked, but using them
as weaponry will aggravate any brawling offenses.
Inhabitants are expected to obey any orders given by a department
chief or security staffer. Complaints of abuse can be lodged with
Dutta, and he’s usually reasonably fair about ensuring that the
authorities don’t push this too far. He knows how much damage a
single disgruntled miner can do to the station, and he doesn’t want
to give Roland Lomax more grist for his complaints.
Life on the Brightside
For permanent residents, Brightside life is fairly predictable. Work
shifts are eight hours out of every twenty-four, and most inhabitants
labor in the refinery or maintenance shops. Everyone aboard the
Brightside is expected either to have some sort of employment or to
pay their way in cash.
Outsiders pay a 5 credit per day “air tax”, and can rent a bunk
and footlocker in the transient quarters for 5 credits a day, with
three meals a day in the cafeteria included. Permanent residents are
usually assigned quarters, and pay about 3 credits a day for food
and incidentals.
The work is hard, but well-paid by most standards. Refinery
workers make 12 credits a day and require no special skills beyond a
willingness to deal with occasional radiation accidents. Technicians
with at least 1 rank of skill in Tech/Astronautics, Tech/Postech, or
Science can earn 25 credits a day. Outsiders can get day labor at
these rates by applying with Dutta at the station offices, but they
won’t be taken on as permanent residents unless Dutta’s convinced
they won’t be trouble down the line.
Entertainment is largely self-provided. The station has an artificial
park on highdeck, and a theater on middeck for concerts, plays,
holomovies, and debates. The Midnight Sun on middeck serves up
drinks and music, and the Clouds and Rain provides companionship
at reasonable rates. Both businesses do roaring business when
visitors dock, but the prostitutes have side jobs in the medical clinic
or hydro bay during the slow periods.
Getting off Brightside can be difficult. The only reliable visitors are
the novium transport ships that dock every three or four months,
and they charge 500 credits for passage to the nearest system. Free
traders might cut cheaper tickets, but there’s no telling when one
will show up, or where it will be bound. Not all of them are the sort
to be burdened with excessive trustworthiness, either.
Personnel on Brightside
One hundred permanent residents call Brightside home, about half
of them born and bred there with the others being laborers who
have come for the steady work. Population growth is small, partly
because Dutta discourages having children aboard the Brightside,
and partly because few couples care to raise a child aboard a semi-
radioactive mining station. Still, ten children are aboard the station,
with ages ranging from two to sixteen.
Of the remaining 90 adults, 52 are men and 38 are women. There
are 22 married or permanently coupled pairs among them, some
of them same-sex. A few of the immigrants from more repressive
worlds bridle at this “unnatural behavior”, but Dutta and the native-
born Brightsiders soon teach them to keep those opinions private.
Twelve of the adults are security staffers working for Livingston Roy,
with four of them on duty at any one time. One guards Yash Dutta,
one guards the fusion plant, one in the station control room on
lowdeck, and one walks a watch between the decks.
Fifty-one of the adults are miners or techs, working the refinery in
three shifts. The usual shift is eight hours, but Dutta has recently
pushed the work to ten-hour shifts with the assurance that it’s a
“temporary measure to keep up production”. Not all of the miners
are sure about that, and morale is low.
Nine of the adults are cargo handlers and maintenance staffers,
keeping the station clean and moving the supplies and novium
ingots around. Mary Tomlinson always personally oversees the
novium transfers, and she, Dutta, and Roland Lomax are the only
people with the codes to the secure bay where the ingots are kept.
Eleven of the adults are business workers, either minding the
Midnight Sun, staffing the Clouds and Rain, or manning the
counter at The Locker.
Seven of the adults are station officials, with Yash Dutta as Director.
Their orders are to be obeyed, and smartassery and mining-barracks
lawyers can expect little success with them.
5
Faces of Brightside
Brightside Station has one hundred permanent staffers, but some are
more likely to be important to the PCs than others. The following
people are some of the more significant staffers aboard the station,
and people whom the PCs might be expected to help or hinder with
their activities. Each one is listed with a description and a note on
their major motivation.
A young, trim woman with lapis lazuli eyes, very
Jaffa Okoye
dark skin, and slender hands scarred by her tools.
Okoye is the Technical Chief of Brightside Station. She’s faintly
claustrophobic, and life on the station has aggravated it. She
spends most of her time helping in the hydroponic deck, or in the
artificial park when off-duty. She wants to get off the station, but
she’s too smitten to leave without Randall Bellows.
Livingston A slightly pudgy, dark skinned man of perpetual
Roy good cheer. He’s always toying idly with a knife.
Roy is the Security Chief of Brightside Station and second-in-
command after Yash Dutta. He pines for Jaffa Okoye, but the
tech chief only has eyes for Randall Bellows. The man is polite
and cheerful, but otherwise distant to everyone else but his good
friend Yash Dutta. He wants to win Jaffa Okoye’s affections and
keep Dutta in charge of Brightside Station.
Marion A lean woman fashioned of rawhide and sharp edges,
Hardlee her gray hair pulled back tightly into a bun.
The owner of the Midnight Sun, the only bar on Brightside
and the only establishment licensed to sell liquor. She is a hard,
humorless woman who doesn’t think much of anyone on the
station, least of all her no-good husband Ranse. She’ll point
out his piloting services to strangers. She wants to go back to
civilization, but is afraid Ranse would leave her if she were to give
him anywhere to go.
Marius A shock-haired young man with a perpetually
Rochambeau absent-minded attitude, dataslab in hand.
Rochambeau is a scientific representative for Stoltmann & Haar,
a research company that pays for sky tomb artifacts. The rates are
not terribly good for most artifacts, but much of what they buy
would be hard to move elsewhere. He finds his work demeaning
to his ambitions as a xenoarchaeologist, and he wants to find
something remarkable so he can get back to civilization.
Mary A tall, raspy-voiced woman with short hair and a
Tomlinson badly-scarred right arm.
She is the Mining Chief of Brightside Station and third-in-
command. Tomlinson is responsible for running the refinery
process on lowdeck and overseeing the transfer of buffer fluid
from the catcher drones to the station. It’s dangerous work,
and the driving pace helped cause the accident that scarred her
arm. Dutta won’t let her take time for a skin transplant, and the
unrelenting pace is turning her against him. She doesn’t especially
care about the station’s bank debts or the quota of payments
they’ve demanded. She wants to slacken the pace of mining.
6
Randall A slim blonde, with beautiful teeth and astonishing
Bellows physical grace. Laughs often.
Bellows is one of the prostitutes working at the Clouds and Rain.
He’s popular with the men and women who like their company
pretty and aren’t looking for sweet nature; his mercenary instincts
aren’t hidden nearly as well as he thinks they are. Jaffa Okoye
has fallen hopelessly in love with him, and he strings her along,
waiting until he’s certain he’s exhausted the potential of the
station before leaving with her- and then leaving with her money
at the next convenient stop. He wants money, and is convinced
the universe owes it to him after all he’s had to do.
“Ranse” A grizzled old system pilot with a squinty gaze and
Hardlee patches of melanoma on his face.
Ransom “Ranse” Hardlee is the husband of Marion Hardlee and
pilot of the Leadbelly, a system boat turned roughly brick-shaped
by the layers of lead shielding on it. Nothing else on Brightside
Station can handle the Beast’s radiation for so long, so Ranse gets
most of the retrieval jobs on catcher drones that die in orbit. He
also hires his piloting services to sky tomb explorers. He wants
to get away from his harridan wife but can’t bear to leave her for
good.
Roland A fat man with a wide grin, pasty complexion and
Lomax steel-gray eyes. His hands are perpetually sweaty.
The Cargo Chief of Brightside Station, in charge of storing and
transporting the cargo that comes in and out of the station. He
also serves as the unofficial quartermaster, and runs the gear shop
known as “The Locker” on mid-deck. He wants to displace Yash
Dutta as director of the station and is quite willing to kill anyone
who gets in his way. He’s recently got his hands on proof of
Dutta’s involvement with the embezzlement of GMI’s funds, and
is waiting for the chance to spring it on a bank auditor.
Suyin A small, buxom woman in her thirties, with dark
Indrani almond eyes and straight black hair.
She’s the Medical Chief of Brightside Station and owner of the
Clouds and Rain brothel. She’s not on the menu, and patrons
who press excessively can expect very rough treatment at security’s
hands- and no anaesthetic after. She’s never entirely lost a native
sense of romance, and dislikes being reminded of the commercial
element of her business; Lomax’s crassness has gotten him banned
from the Clouds and Rain. She wants to make good romantic
matches among the occupants of Brightside.
A tall, dark, flinty-eyed man with close-cropped hair
Yash Dutta and an unblinking gaze. Somewhere past seventy but
still vigorous.
Dutta is the Director of Brightside Station and absolute monarch
within its confines. He dislikes Roland Lomax and suspects him
of plotting to cause an “accident”, though he really doesn’t take
him as seriously as he should. He’s a good friend of Livingston
Roy, and trusts him implicitly. He wants to maintain control of
Brightside Station and remain safely away from his past.

Lowdeck Facilities
L1 Gear Locker
A dozen elderly but meticulously maintained service vacc suits are
kept in this gear locker. These vacc suits are designed for rough
maintenance service, and grant AC 5 to the wearer, at the cost of a
-2 penalty to any hit rolls or skill checks reliant on physical motion.
A wearer with Exosuit skill can cut this penalty in half.
Two of the suits are intended for cleanup use in case the catcher
drones spill the radioactive buffer fluid they use to snare the novium.
These suits are covered in heavy leaded shielding, and increase the
interval between radiation saving throws to the next increment of
time- a once per minute roll becomes a once per hour roll, a once
per hour roll becomes a once per day roll, and so forth. These suits
are even more unwieldy than the others. Wearers take -6 to hit rolls
and -4 to any skill checks involving movement. Exosuit skill cuts
this penalty in half.
Aside from the vacc suits, there are numerous ordinary tools and
maintenance supplies in the locker. An adequate Tech/Postech or
Tech/Astronautics tool kit could be assembled from the contents,
and a laser cutting torch can also be found under a pile of flexible
ceraplast sheets. The torch can cut a human-sized hole through
an interior bulkhead in five minutes, or half an hour for cutting
through the station’s outer hull. The laser cutter requires a Type B
power cell for every fifteen minutes of operation. The beam’s focal
point is too clumsy to use effectively as a weapon.
L2 Prep Room
Lavatories, showers, and personal lockers are available here, along
with food preparation equipment and an announcement board for
shift notices. Few employees keep anything of particular value in
their lockers.
L3 Pressure Dock
This vast compartment is dominated by the huge sliding panel on
the outby hull wall of the station. Most frigate-sized or smaller
craft can safely land within the pressure dock, even those not built
to handle the rigors of atmospheric entry. Once safely inside the
station, the numerous robotic working arms along the bulkheads
can assist in unloading cargo and servicing the ship. Refueling does
not take place within the pressure dock; a pump umbilical is run
out on the mooring studs in order to minimize the risks of handling
the refined hydrogen.
Several wheeled cargo sleds are racked along the bulkheads. The
Brightside doesn’t usually deal in more than a few hundred tons
of cargo yearly, and bulk cargo handling tools have never been
necessary for loading the novium ingots or unloading supply crates.
L4 Processing Filter Bay
The buffer medium is circulated through the spiral filter matrix
in the center of this room, progressively heated, chilled, and
bombarded with a dozen different kinds of energies. The matrix
is old and brittle from constant use, and five points of damage are
enough to break a hole in it. If the matrix is in use, the ensuing
Brightside Station Plans
spray of glowing buffer medium will force a radiation save every
round. If the unlucky victim is wearing a vacc suit, they need make
a save only every minute.
Once the buffer medium has been filtered, it’s returned to the
holding tank to be pumped back into the catcher drone. The
extracted particles of novium are routed on to the smelter.
L5 Refinery Intake
Intake of novium particles from the catcher drones is handled
at this control room. The drones are programmed to link up to
a dedicated mooring stud and pump the liquid buffer medium
through the stud’s umbilical. The controls here are necessary to
ensure that the highly radioactive buffer medium ends up safely in
the shielded holding tanks. Carelessness or sabotage could spray the
entire station exterior with the viscous medium, forcing a radiation
resistance check every minute for anyone outside lacking a specially
shielded vacc suit.
L6 Smelter
Here the extracted novium is embedded in lead ingots, each
weighing roughly fifteen kilograms and counting as three items for
encumbrance purposes. An average of two ingots are produced each
day, and someone who managed to acquire a few could easily sell
them on most TL 4 planets for roughly 2,500 credits per ingot.
Mary Tomlinson runs the refinery operation from this room, and
keeps a hawk’s eye on the ingots. As soon as the lead is cool from the
casting, one of Livingston Roy’s security guards escorts a tech and
the ingot to one of the locked storage bays in the cargo hold. The
ingots are never moved from the storage bay without Tomlinson’s
presence, and she inventories them at irregular times during the
week. Cargo ships chartered by the bank arrive to pick up the ingots
every three or four months.
If someone were to sabotage the smelter or damage it while it was
in operation, a spray of molten lead would pose an distinct hazard
to anyone in the room. Anyone within six meters of the damage or
sabotage would have to make the easier of a Luck or Tech saving
throw or else take 1d10 damage from the fine mist of molten metal.
L7 Station Bridge
At least two staffers and one of Livingston Roy’s security men are
on duty here at all hours, monitoring system readouts and scanning
the Hard Light system for any unexpected visitors. The radiation
output of the Beast makes such scanning extremely difficult. Any
attempt to scan outside of Brightside’s region suffers a -4 on the
skill check.
In theory, anyone with control of this room can control any of
Brightside’s automated systems, including its life support, power,
and maneuver jets. Instant access requires the correct passcodes,
however, which are changed on a weekly basis. Without the
passcodes, hacking the system requires at least Computer-0 skill,
ten minutes of effort, and a skill test at difficulty 10. Each point
the check is failed by adds another ten minutes to the time required
before the hack is successful. Characters who roll 6 or less simply
can’t break the encryption.
7
For prudence’s sake, Yash Dutta has installed an emergency override
in the backup bridge up on highdeck. Someone with a metatool and
Middeck Facilities
the Tech/Postech skill can try to physically bridge the override and M1 Armory
regain control with a skill check at the same time and difficulty as This locker is sealed more securely than most doors on the station,
the hacking check above. requiring at least Security-0 skill, five minutes, and a check against
difficulty 10 to pop it open. Each point by which the test is failed
While the station bridge can give potentially lethal commands to adds another five minutes of required time before the door is
the ship’s systems, any blatantly unsafe order will be automatically successfully opened. Failing by more than two points sets off a
announced to the entire station, and a delay of five minutes will be station alarm on the bridge.
given before the command is carried out. Someone who can retake
or override the bridge can then cancel the command. The board Livingston Roy keeps the security staff’s equipment locked away
is designed to make the “cancel lethal order” override blatantly here when not in use. The armory’s total contents include fifteen
obvious even to the least technically proficient onlooker. stun batons, fifteen semiautomatic pistols, fifteen armored
undersuits, 600 rounds of ammunition, 24 type A power cells, two
medkits, six lazarus patches, ten suits of woven armor, two combat
L8 Umbilical Dock
field uniforms, six shotguns, and two combat shotguns.
Cruisers and some exceptionally ungainly frigates are too large to
dock in Brightside’s pressure dock, so the station can send out a
The twelve security personnel draw stun batons and pistols when on
flexible umbilical connection to the loading port on such craft. It’s
duty and wear the armored undersuits almost all the time. In case
been years since Brightside’s seen a visit from anything that couldn’t
of a riot or attack, the heavier equipment is broken out and used
use the pressure dock, so this area is now cluttered with numerous
with elan.
pieces of broken extraction gear and other large, bulky space trash.
The detritus makes excellent cover during firefights or attempts at
stealth. M2 Clouds and Rain
The station brothel is run by Suyin Indrani, and gets most of its
traffic when the novium transport ships dock. One of Roy’s security
L9 Warehouse
people works as a bouncer during heavy business periods, but such
The cargo hold includes storage bay rooms for those who want extra
services are rarely needed; even the roughest spacer is rarely stupid
security on their cargo. Cracking the security on the cargo doors
enough to get into trouble on a station that offers him no place to
requires a Security skill test at difficulty 9, while opening a storage
run. The locals provide the most reliable business.
bay requires a check at difficulty 10. Entry into the warehouse
is restricted to Roland Lomax and the cargo handlers beneath
The lobby is fitted out in a vaguely faux-Japanese style, with
him. Only one set of cargo doors is ever open at once- either to
multicolored plastic paneling and decorative wall paintings. Mirrors
the umbilical bay, the pressure dock, or the elevator core. A cargo
cover the aft wall to increase the seeming size of the room, and
handler stands watch at the door whenever cargo is being shifted.
assorted items of plush pseudo-mahogany furniture are fastened to
Lomax is an ugly boss, and the handler turnover is substantial.
the station deck. A bar along the aft wall dispenses non-alcoholic
One might be persuaded to turn over his access codes if he or she
drinks and snacks after a credit swipe.
had reason to believe that they’d have a fast ship off Brightside
immediately thereafter. Only Lomax, Dutta, and Mary Tomlinson
The employees have some of the nicest personal quarters on the
have codes to the storage bay where the novium is kept.
station, and live here rather than in the bunk quarters on the top
level. During station emergencies that involve more casualties than
L10 Workshop the medical center can handle, the employees bunk topside while
The thousand and one parts and fittings that need to be replaced their rooms are given over to the injured.
for the station’s smooth operation are fabricated here, and broken
gear is repaired and refurbished. Not everything necessary can be
M3 Medical Clinic
fashioned here, but Brightside can get by with no more than a few
Suyin Indrani spends most of her time here when she’s not
tons of replacement supplies and raw materials shipped in yearly.
supervising the Clouds and Rain. The clinic usually handles minor
The equipment here is sufficient for any ordinary exercise of the
illnesses and the occasional STD, but it retains much of the medical
Tech/Postech or Tech/Astronautic skills. Jaffa Okoye spends most of
equipment necessary for a mining station. Accidents are rare, but
her work hours here; she can usually be persuaded to allow others to
when they happen they usually produce severe injuries.
use the equipment under her supervision for a bribe of fifty credits
a day. Jaffa will not permit weapons or explosives to be made in the
The clinic has medical bays sufficient to keep ten casualties under
workshop.
close observation. Another ten cold sleep pods can be used to freeze
victims until room opens up in the medical bays. The clinic has
standard TL 4 medical supplies, and two of the prostitutes at the
Clouds and Rain are apprenticing under Suyin for their medical
certifications, but the medical services are largely oriented toward
patching wounds, fixing radiation exposure, and curing common
diseases. Exotic poisons or sicknesses might well baffle Suyin and
her assistants.

8
Medical care is free to station employees. Visitors can expect to pay M8 Theater
fifty credits for an office call and light work, or a hundred credits This large room serves multiple entertainment purposes. Public
a day for intensive medical care. Those who can’t pay can work off performances of plays, concerts, or debates go on several times a
their debt. Yash Dutta has no qualms about spacing those who week to relieve the tedium of the station. When the transport ships
refuse to either work or pay. come in, the girls and boys at the Clouds and Rain occasionally
put on burlesque shows that are enthusiastically attended by most
M4 Public Lavatories of the station. Shows are usually free, though donations for an
These banks of lavatories and showers are the main hygiene facilities exceptionally fine performance are customary.
on the station, and can be found in use at all hours.
The theater is also equipped as the crash room for mid-deck. In
M5 Station Offices the case of a disastrous hull breech or industrial accident, up to
The business end of the station is run out of these offices, and Yash two hundred people can fit into the theater, and the entrance is
Dutta usually holds court here for eight to ten hours out of any equipped to serve as a pressure-sealed airlock. Emergency air
day. A security guard is with him whenever the office is open, along supplies can support the inhabitants for as long as a week, and the
with two or three clerks or technicians tending to the day-to-day raised theater stage doubles as the holding tank for a significant
operation of the station’s finances and engineering. Other offices amount of the station’s water storage. A panic box contains medical
are set aside for Jaffa Okoye, Livingston Roy, and Mary Tomlinson, supplies and four well-kept vacc suits.
though none of the three spend a great deal of time in them.
M9 Maintenance Rooms
Yash is willing to give spot labor to visitors, with unskilled workers These cramped, machine-filled rooms allow access to maintenance
getting dirty, somewhat dangerous labor in the refinery and cargo ducts and power couplings. Bannerjee Twelve model stations such
holds for 12 credits a day, while someone with at least one level of as the Brightside are exceptionally reliable, however, and few techs
Tech or Science can get more complex technical work for 25 credits ever have need to come down here. As a consequence, these rooms
a day. Aside from day labor, Yash is always interested in employing are quite popular for much-needed privacy aboard the station.
skillful and discreet help to sort out some of the problems that crop The doors are usually locked, but many locals have or can borrow
up on Brightside. keycards. Opening the lock without the benefit of a keycard requires
a Security check at difficulty 8, with one try possible per PC.
M6 The Locker
This shop is Roland Lomax’s domain, stacked high with crates full The Locker’s Inventory
of imported snacks, pornography, non-alcoholic beverages, music
chips, and all the other staples that make life on a mining station
Weapons and Armor Price Qty
minimally tolerable. Aside from the luxuries, he also maintains a
modest selection of gear for explorers interested in investigating the Woven body armor 500 2
sky tombs, as listed in the sidebar. If he doesn’t have it, he might be Vacc suit 125 6
able to get it by arranging a special production run with Jaffa Okoye Monoblade 75 2
down in the workshops, but only if the gear is the sort of thing that
Semi-automatic pistol 100 2
a mining station’s design computers might be expected to have as a
manufacturing template. Even if it can be arranged, the price will Shotgun 100 1
be at least twice what the book cost lists. Laser pistol 300 1
Equipment and Ammunition
Lomax is willing to buy used gear from the PCs if he has some
reason to suspect it’s salable, but starts at 20% of its book price. Ammunition 1/round 400
PCs that look “useful” to his plans to usurp Yash Dutta might get Backpacks, TL 4 60 6
as much as 50% for their goods. Lomax can afford to buy 7,500 Bioscanner 400 1
credits worth of used gear.
Lazarus patch 30 10
Medkit 100 3
M7 The Midnight Sun
This cantina is the only establishment permitted to sell alcoholic Metatool 220 2
beverages, and does a roaring trade with spacers and the thirsty Navcomp 700 1
locals. This monopoly is a constant source of aggravation to Roland Power Cell, Type A 15 10
Lomax, who is correctly convinced that Yash Dutta has imposed it
Pressure Tent 125 1
simply to slap him down. The fact that other spacers get away with
bootlegging hydroponic hooch with near impunity does nothing Rations, one day 8 50
to lessen Dutta’s sharp eye on Lomax’s trade. Marion Hardlee is Rope, TL 4 50/20 m. 200 m.
the owner-manager of the bar. The bar is occupied by a half-dozen Survey scanner 300 2
patrons at any given hour, with the downshift often featuring live
Toolkit/Astronautic 700 1
entertainment from a band made up of off-duty miners. Approval
is demonstrated with thrown credit chips, while less popular groups Toolkit/Postech 400 1
are pelted with plastic bottles.
9
Highdeck Facilities
H1 Backup Bridge
This bridge is equipped with smaller, more primitive versions
of all the controls and monitors available in the station bridge
on lowdeck. The station can be operated as normal from this
compartment, though the work is clumsier and more difficult. This
bridge only engages if the station bridge has been damaged, or if
Yash Dutta triggers the physical override hidden under a false panel
of disconnected dials. Yash and Livingston Roy believe they’re the
only two people to know about the override, but Roland Lomax has
also learned of it from a station tech who discovered it by accident.
The tech suffered a tragic mishap in the cargo bay shortly thereafter,
and Lomax is considering how best to use his knowledge.
H2 Chapel
This bay is kept prepared with a number of slide-out panels and
folding altars for most of the common religions within several spike
drive drills of Hard Light. Religious services tend to the informal
but sincere, with about half the permanent inhabitants being fairly
devout in their religion. The loneliness, isolation, and danger of
duty at Brightside Station moves many of its inhabitants to look
for spiritual solace. The station has no official clergy, though there
are station inhabitants who can qualify for those who aren’t too
fussy about accreditations. A rabbi, an imam, a Protestant pastor, a
Roman Catholic priest, and a Hindu priest all have small followings
among the staff. Tensions are minimal; troublemakers are assisted
into a broader appreciation of ecumenism by Livingston Roy’s
security personnel, if necessary.
H3 Fusion Plant
The station’s power is produced by this small, reliable postech fusion
plant. While the Beast kicks out enormous amounts of energy, the
infrastructure necessary to extract the solar power without melting
down the equipment was more than the station’s designers wanted
to handle. One tech is constantly on duty here to monitor the plant,
along with a security guard to ensure that no one meddles with it.
H4 Heavenly Hash Cafeteria
The station cafeteria, serving three hundred meals a day, and more
when trading ships dock. The ship’s cook, Joshua Yang, is a rail-
thin Reformed Neo-Vegan barbecue enthusiast who does wonders
with the tank-grown meat substitutes produced by the hydro bay.
The limited range of foodstuffs grown in the hydro bay cramps him
somewhat, but the miners’ complaints about the food are desultory
and more in the line of tradition than necessity.
A few banks of cookers are kept available for those who want
to make their own meals, and Joshua has side deals going with
a few other station cooks who sell their services to other station
personnel. The one thing Joshua won’t tolerate is the use of “his”
kitchen for cooking real meat, egg, or dairy products, and doing so
is liable to get an adventurous cook permanently banished. This has
resulted in a few illicit restaurants run sporadically out of peoples’
quarters, where miners can get a “real” cheeseburger. Joshua’s always
complaining to Livingston Roy about these get-togethers, but the
security chief is amenable to a little beef-based bribery to look the
other way.
10
H5 Hydroponic Bay
Most of the station’s food is produced here in long troughs of force-
grown gengineered vegetables and meat substitutes, while depleted
atmosphere is cleansed and refreshed through banks of specially-
designed oxygenating lichens. The hydro bay can support up to
two hundred people indefinitely, provided someone with sufficient
Tech/Medical is available to do common bio-maintenance. With
only a hundred permanent residents aboard the station, meals are
relatively cheap and abundant, though somewhat monotonous.
If some accident or disaster takes out the hydro bay, there are stored
rations in one of the sealed cargo bay storage lockers sufficient
to feed 200 people for six months. Backup mechanical oxygen
scrubbers can produce a minimally tolerable atmosphere for up to
200 people indefinitely, but they are prone to regular breakdowns
without constant, laborious tech maintenance.
H6 Park Plaza
Vines and flowers in hydroponic planters decorate this large room,
with the ceiling set to project an image of a clear blue sky. The deck
is covered in grass-like turf substitute, and a large fountain made up
to appear as a natural spring flows on the far side of the plaza. The
plaza is a popular spot for those in need of relief from the station’s
confines, and Jaffa Okoye practically lives here when not on duty.
The vine-shaded close at the outby side of the plaza is known as
“the lovers’ nook”, and custom keeps people away from it when the
artificial stone by its entrance has a piece of clothing draped over it.
The park plaza is also set up as highdeck’s crash room, much as
the theater is on middeck. The fountain tank provides water and
the vines can keep up to two hundred people breathing for a week
before the strain kills them. A large, rectangular artificial rock in
the lovers’ nook contains medical supplies, some emergency dry
rations, and a pair of well-kept vacc suits. The plaza’s entrance is
reinforced for use as a pressure-sealed airlock.
H7 Public Rest Rooms
These banks of unisex lavatories are kept in heavy use.
H8 Transient Quarters
This cramped room is less comfortable than the permanent quarters,
and are stacked with bunks and simple footlockers to house the
transient population of short-haul workers or tomb explorers. Each
room has bunks and lockers for eight occupants, and minimal room
for anything else. A bunk costs 5 credits a day, though on slow
months Yash will let a rich adventurer rent the entire room for 20
credits a day or 100 credits weekly.
H9 Residential Quarters
These quarters were originally intended to serve twice as many
permanent occupants, and so are relatively capacious compared to
the usual run of space station accommodations. Single workers and
junior techs bunk two to a room, while married couples and senior
staff have their own quarters. Swing-down bunks and furniture that
folds down onto the deck increase the available free space when
necessary, and folding panels can be used to divide the room for
minimal privacy. Prisoners are locked into a bare room here.

Space in the Hard Light system is extraordinarily hostile. The
massive radiation emissions produced by the Beast will kill a spacer
in minutes if he’s not adequately shielded, and the energies wreak
havoc on most forms of radio communications. Anyone who means
to get around in Hard Light needs to remember a few important
facts.
Radiation Poisoning
Hard Light is constantly bombarded by radiation from the red
giant at its core. A spacer with only a vacc suit between him and
the star needs to make a Physical Effect save every minute. Failure
means the victim loses one point of Constitution. If the character’s
Constitution modifier goes down due to that loss, they immediately
lose a number of hit points from their maximum equal to their
current level. A character reduced below Constitution 3 dies and
cannot be revived by biopsionics or lazarus patches.
This damage can be cured by a TL 4 medical clinic such as that on
Brightside or in a medbay-equipped ship. Each point lost requires
48 hours of medical care before being restored. Brightside will give
free medical help if the injuries were incurred in working for the
station, but otherwise chief medic Suyin Indrani will bill 100 credits
a day for such treatment. Friends can expect a substantial discount.
Wearing a special shielded suit like those worn in a ship’s power
room cuts the radiation risk, forcing a roll only once per hour
instead of once per minute. These suits are clumsy, however, and
inflict a -2 on all to-hit rolls and skill checks involving movement.
Characters with the Exosuit skill halve these penalties.
Even a starship’s radiation shielding is not permanently effective in
resisting the Beast’s light. Most starship shielding will break down
after 72 hours of exposure, forcing radiation saves on an hourly
basis thereafter. If the ship can get to safety by docking with the
Brightside or hiding behind a large asteroid, the buffer system will
have time to purge itself, restoring one hour of endurance for each
hour spent in safety.
The only sure safety against the radiation lies in hiding behind a
large body of mass, such as an asteroid or planetoid. Characters
safely buffered by at least fifty meters of rock can avoid radiation
poisoning.
Radio Blackouts
Radio communications are almost worthless in Hard Light. The
background emissions scramble any message beyond a dozen meters
or so, forcing spacers to communicate either with comm lasers or
by plugging in to a length of comm hardline. In a pinch, characters
in vacc suits can communicate by pressing their helmets together
to allow the vibration of spoken words to transfer through the
faceplates.
Brightside Space and its Hazards
Ship Scanning and Detection
The noise makes detecting starships remotely even more difficult than
usual. A ship that is broadcasting its position can be automatically
located, but detecting a silent ship outside of the scanner’s own
region suffers a -4 penalty to the skill check, in addition to any
penalty that may be caused by a ship’s stealth profile. Locating a
sky tomb in the debris cloud of the outer rim is a matter of pure
luck without knowing the general coordinates. In consequence, the
tomb maps located in certain of the crypts are extremely valuable,
and some explorers intentionally destroy them after taking down
the data in order to sell the locations to other adventurers.
Ranse Hardlee and the Leadbelly
It’s likely that the PCs will eventually enlist Ranse Hardlee and
his shielded system boat Leadbelly to get them out to a sky tomb.
Hardlee is a soft touch, partly because he wants to get away from his
wife back at the station as much as he wants to turn a profit on his
guide work. He’ll give the first trip free to explorers, and afterwards
charge them 250 credits to charter the Leadbelly for an expedition.
The Leadbelly has been refitted with extremely heavy shielding, and
can endure the direct light of the Beast for up to a week before
the buffer fails. Ranse earns most of his money doing retrieval on
catcher drones that die out in space; he’ll stuff the explorers in the
retrieval bay and let them sort out their own rations and necessities
on the trip out and back. The cockpit of the Leadbelly is sealed
off from the retrieval bay, and any attempt to hijack the ship will
encourage Ranse to open the bay doors in deep space.
The Leadbelly requires two days for a trip to or from a sky tomb, and
Ranse is willing to wait for up to three days for explorers to return
from within. Under no circumstances will he leave the cockpit of
the Leadbelly or risk himself or the ship, though he’s inclined to be
cooperative about requests that don’t involve risk. The Leadbelly has
a docking umbilical that can seal directly to a sky tomb’s external
pressure door, allowing the characters to directly enter the tombs
from the ship without requiring a vacc suit.
Ranse will also take people out to the hermit settlements that
have sprung up in some of the cleared sky tombs, but only if he’s
convinced that the PCs are “decent people”, and that their business
in the settlement isn’t the sort he’d regret facilitating. Roland
Lomax has pestered him often to take him out to the Empty Grave
settlement, but Ranse is old enough to have seen Lomax’s kind all
too often. He knows the cargo chief does things out there that a
decent man shouldn’t help. If the PCs can convince him that they
have a worthy reason to visit the “artist’s colony”, he might be
willing to take them, however.
If it becomes important, you can use the usual statistics for a shuttle
for the Leadbelly, though it lacks a spike drive. Ranse has also bolted
on a multispectral laser to help discourage unfriendly attention.
11
The Sky Tombs
The sky tombs were discovered only a scant two years ago, and
there has been no real archaeological or xenological study of them
performed yet. The only people who have made a concentrated
effort to explore them have been adventurers and freebooters with
minimal interest in the society or history of their creators. If the PCs
take an interest in the details of the sky tombs, it’s very possible they
will be the first people to actually discover much of the information
revealed here.
History of the Tombs
Long before mankind had learned to work metal, the system of
Hard Light was place of sacred pilgrimage for the aliens known
as the Ushans. These part-plant, part-mammalian humanoids had
an elaborate and peaceful society built around the worship of the
light which nourished them. The first Ushan ship to discover Hard
Light immediately recognized in its star a symbol of the destroying
love of God, the blazing purity of passion that dissolved all mortal
distinctions in its burning radiance.
The Ushans built a great Sun Temple in orbit around the Beast,
using their superior techniques of radiation shielding and light
manipulation to allow the pilgrims to survive the divine spectacle.
The High Priest of the temple welcomed visitors from throughout
the peaceful domain of the Ushans, and Hard Light became one of
the chief spiritual centers of the Ushan polity.
The first sky tombs were constructed 8,000 years ago, during the
First Dynasty of the Sun Temple. Those Ushans interred in these
tombs wished to escape the cycle of rebirth common to their race
and spend the rest of eternity basking in the light of the Godstar. At
first, only High Priests were accorded this honor, but as time went
on more and more pious lay people were able to win places in the
tombs.
The Second and Third Dynasties of high priests followed in the
ensuing 5,000 years, until the peaceful Ushans had the misfortune
to encounter the ravenous hordes of the Chittik. These beetle-wasp
sentients ruthlessly enslaved the Ushans for use as hosts and slave
labor. With no talent for war, the Ushans were soon brought low.
The Chittik permitted them their religion and a few sad trappings
of their former dominion, but the sky tombs constructed during
this Decline were touched with the darkness of their plight.
Ushan history was brought to a close with a great rebellion 1,000
years ago. After millennia of suffering under the Chittik, the Ushans
finally abandoned their pacifistic faith to fight back against their
tormentors. The attempt was a disaster; the Chittik easily crushed
their rebellious slaves. Having fatally compromised their faith and
lacking even success to justify it, the remaining Ushans committed
mass suicide by casting themselves into the flames. The Sun Temple
launched itself into the heart of the Godstar and whole worlds of
Ushans had their skies darkened by the blaze of burning pyres.
This self-immolation robbed the Chittik of their hosts. Unable to
adjust to the sudden loss of their slave-prey, the Chittik too followed
the Ushans into collapse. Here and there, small pockets of both
races may still survive, but they are unknown to the modern world.
12
Tomb Structure
Sky tombs are built into large carbon-iron asteroids that float in
the thick debris field that fills Hard Light’s outer rim region. The
exterior of the asteroid is largely untouched, and the only hint that
something is unusual about the rock is in the docking port and
pressure annex jutting from the outby side of the asteroid. This
docking port is the only access to the tomb, unless intruders are
prepared to excavate sixty or seventy meters of rock to get in.
The interior of a sky tomb is warm, slightly humid, and maintains
pressure and a breathable atmosphere. Tombs are powered by
sophisticated solar power arrays embedded in concealed light shunts
on the surface of the asteroid. A tomb can scrub the atmosphere
for up to a hundred inhabitants before the system starts to suffer
overload. Recyclers capture and filter water, but the tombs aren’t
able to refresh water supplies depleted by removal or loss. Ceilings
average 3 meters, but some chambers rise much higher.
The ancient Ushans detested darkness, and so tombs are invariably
well-lit unless something has damaged the light shunts that transfer
the radiance from the asteroid’s surface. Many tombs also have
gengineered plant life as decorations and solace for visitors. Some
such plants have altered over the course of long millennia.
The tombs were originally intended for the visits of loved ones and
reverent pilgrims, and so accommodations were made for them.
During the darkness of the Decline, the Chittik forced the Ushans
to install facilities for Chittik caretakers to monitor visitors. Some
of these facilities are still functional, and in some sky tombs the
Chittik remain still in their cold sleep pods, waiting for the next
visitors to open the door to the tomb.
Sunskimmers
A very few sky tombs have concealed sunskimmer bays, with doors
that fold open to reveal a pressurized docking bay. These small
system craft use starlight as a catalyst to their internal engines.
Sunskimmers aren’t equipped with spike drives, but for purposes
of statistics they can be treated as shuttles with an effective spike
drive rating of 3 for travel times within the system and Armor 25
against lasers. The glassy ceramic structure of the sunskimmers
leaves the interior of the skimmer constantly lit by the Beast’s
light, but it filters out harmful radiation perfectly. Sunskimmers
can remain in Hard Light’s space indefinitely without risking
radiation poisoning for their passengers. A pilot with Vehicle/
Space-1 or better can puzzle out the controls on a sunskimmer.
Flying one is at a -1 penalty to skill checks until the pilot has had
a week to familiarize himself with the controls.
Sunskimmers never need to be fueled, but any repairs or
maintenance costs twice as much to accommodate the alien
technology. The base sale price for a sunskimmer is 200,000
credits if the players can somehow figure out how to get it out of
Hard Light. Doing so will require a cruiser-sized ship with at least
200 tons of free space or a fighter-scale ship bay. Alternately, the
characters can simply strap it to a frigate-sized ship and accept a
-3 penalty on the spike drill check on the jump outward.
 The Ushans and the Chittik
The Ushans
The Ushans were a largely human-like race of peaceful sapients
that flourished some 8,000 years ago. Their leisurely exploration
eventually discovered Hard Light, and the system became a prime
pilgrimage site for the pious Ushan light-worshippers.

The Ushans were a unique blend of algal plant symbiote and

mammalian organism. Their bodies were capable of remarkably
efficient conversion of sunlight into energy, and they required
only water and small amounts of minerals in order to grow and
maintain health. In appearance they strongly resembled humans,
albeit with leafy head growths and occasional symmetrical patches
of bark-like skin. Their coloration ranged from a very pale jade to
a green so deep as to be almost black.

Ushan life cycles were a blend of mammalian and plant traits. Their
species had both male and female genders, and genetic variance
was promoted by conventional mammalian sexual interchange.
However, reproduction was not something that happened for
living Ushans. Only when an adult Ushan died and was buried
did their genetic material mix to form the sprouting of up to ten
woody buds that eventually opened to reveal Ushan infants. These
infants were helped by lactation from a female Ushan to assist in
their initial growth spurt, but within a year they could maintain
growth with no more than minerals, water, and light. Such was
the nature of this reproduction that many Ushans inherited some
portion of their predecessor’s memories or personality.

Ushan life spans were similar to those of humans, and largely spent
in peaceful cultivation of other plant life or the construction of
elaborate stone or glass structures. Ushan society was defined by
their keen awareness of how different they were than other animals
on their homeworld; while beasts were forced to kill and devour
living things to survive, the Ushans required only light. They
viewed this as a sign of God’s special favor to them, and held as
sacred the distinction between those who kill, the Eaters, and the
pure and holy Ushans.
The Chittik
This peaceful existence ended when the Ushans encountered the
Chittik. These ferocious beetle-wasp beings viewed the Ushans as
nothing more than a magnificent source of hosts and slave labor.
Chittik are roughly human-sized, with a segmented body, four
compound eyes, six limbs, chewing mandibles, and a flat, beetle-like
torso that terminates in a forward-curling, scorpion-like ovipositor.
They have two legs for walking and four for manipulating, each
manipulator-leg ending in a three-fingered hand. They are
omnivores, though they prefer meat.
Chittik are almost entirely female, save for a few sluggish drone
males that serve to fertilize the females. Reproduction requires
the oviposition of hundreds of small eggs into the body of a host
mammal. The paralytic venom of the Chittik is useless on mammals
not native to their world, so victims generally must be restrained by
other means. The eggs gestate for two weeks before hatching and
eating their way out of the host.
Most Chittik spawn are mindless insects that fail to develop into
fully-grown Chittik. Rich nervous tissue can improve the odds of a
given hatchling’s development, so sentient mammals are preferred
for hosts. The Ushans proved ideal for the Chittik, because the
ravaged remains of the host could be planted again and grow a new
crop of hosts in turn. A full-grown Ushan could serve as host to
several hundred Chittik eggs. The Chittik did not always wait for an
Ushan to grow, though they considered it preferable.
Psychologically, the Chittik have no interest whatsoever in non-
Chittik sentients. They are tools and prey and nothing more. At
the height of their power, several Chittik polities struggled with
each other, each led by a Swarm Mistress who had the unflinching
allegiance of her unnumbered progeny. The Chittik inability to
negotiate or trade with other sentients helped their downfall; when
the Ushans immolated themselves, the other neighboring sentients
were too ready to fight the Chittik, and did not provide an adequate
number of hosts in time to stave off societal collapse.
Chittik have short life spans. A hatchling can grow to full size in a
year, but a Chittik will die within thirty years of hatching.
13
 Creating a Sky Tomb
This supplement includes all the necessary pieces to create and
stock a wide range of sky tombs for your players to explore. A few
sample tombs are provided for your use, but the following process
demonstrates how to take the individual pieces and reassemble
them into any number of enigmatic alien crypts for the enjoyment
of your players. All you’ll need are your dice, a pencil, and some
graph paper.
Choose the Dynasty
The first step in creating a sky tomb lies in deciding which dynasty
of High Priests created it. There are three major dynasties that
built tombs in addition to those of the waning millennia of the
Decline during Chittik rule. Each dynasty had its own characteristic
construction traits, and you can use these traits to personalize the
rooms and corridors of a station. The additional flavor will help
players begin to recognize similarities between tombs of the same
dynasty and help give them a sense of distinction and variance
among the tombs.
First Dynasty tombs are characterized by sharp geometric shapes
along interior walls- squares, triangles, and rectangles interlaced in
intricate, spiky patterns. Light bars run along the ceilings, and there
is a strong smell of cinnamon in the atmosphere. Furnishings are
very square and angular. The pale plastic compound used for fittings
and furniture has yellowed and decayed, a leprous sort of blistering
forming on the surface. These blisters weep a caustic chemical
if broken by rough contact, doing 1 point of damage to anyone
touching the object. First Dynasty Ushans preferred hard angles
and non-representative art to emphasize the fact that their creations
required no use of parts from living creatures.
Second Dynasty tombs are notable for circles and curves and soft
arcs, both in wall decorations and in room layouts. Light fixtures
are globes embedded in the walls. The curved furnishings are very
brittle, and collapse into jagged shards under pressure. Even the
script used during the Second Dynasty was rounded and flowing,
and it is difficult to tell that both it and the sharp glyphs of First
Dynasty writing are from the same language. Second Dynasty
builders preferred more organic shapes to indicate respect for the
divine shapes that living creatures embodied. The air often has a
scent like that of roses.
Third Dynasty tombs are by far the most ornate, with walls covered
with carvings of Ushans in the pride of life on a world with two
suns. They are never shown eating, but instead are shown tending
plants, building structures, beguiling lovers, and conversing in
gardens. Structures are more squared, but less rigorously so than
in the First Dynasty, and the glyphs are a straightened, simplified
form of Second Dynasty writing. Light is seemingly sourceless,
emitted from countless hair-fine light shunts that pump safe visible
light directly from the surface of the asteroid. The air has a faintly
metallic taste to it.
Tombs built during the Decline are stark, utilitarian structures
devoid of ornamentation. Their rooms are austere and simple and
the furnishings are mere extrusions of stone from the asteroid
itself. Hidden in nooks and concealed places are occasional lines of
14
hurriedly-cut script giving the laborer’s name and some message to
be passed down to a hopefully brighter day. The air is dry in these
tombs, and many have the tell-tale signs of Chittik inhabitation.
Build the Tomb Map
Included in this supplement is a sheet of 36 tomb geomorphs
arranged in six rows of six. The top row shows entrance layouts
while the bottom six show corridors and rooms. To build a map,
take your graph paper in hand and decide how large the tomb
should be. 3 rows by 3 columns of tiles is usually a minimum, while
7 x 7 is probably as large as one tomb should be.
Next, roll 1d6 or choose from among the six entrance geomorphs.
Draw in this geomorph along the bottom row of your map, probably
in the center column. Then choose or roll 1d6 twice to find the
column and row of the next geomorph to place, and draw it in
wherever you think it fits best on the map. Repeat the process until
you’ve filled out your tomb map. You should feel free to trim and
change the geomorphs as necessary to suit your purposes, adding
corridors or clipping exits as convenience recommends.
The entrance to each sky tomb has a short mooring dock that leads
up to a heavy pressure door and airlock. The doors are usually
unlocked, but can be sealed from within by residents. An intercom
inside the airlock allows for communication with those on the other
side. Forcing a door requires either explosives or an hour with a
cutting bar; laser cutters are almost useless on Ushan structures.
Stock the Rooms
Once you’ve drawn you’re map, you’ll probably have at least 9 rooms
to fill with something interesting. The sky tombs were intended not
simply as crypts, but also as places of pilgrimage for those devotees
who wished to revere the ancient dead. Facilities and places meant
for their accommodation are normal to the tombs. You can use the
room dressing table in the Stars Without Number resource section, or
you can use the tables on the following pages. You should be ready
to tweak descriptions and details to fit the flavor of the dynasty to
which the tomb belongs.
Identify Residents
Sky tombs filled with the relics of a dead race can be very interesting,
but the tombs are often more lively if they have more active
occupants. Many tombs were staffed with Chittik guardians who
slept in cold sleep pods until the tomb was opened for the next
batch of Ushan pilgrims. Those woken after such a long sleep may
not understand what has happened to their empire, but they can
recognize humans as likely prey.
Conversely, very human threats can inhabit the sky tombs. The
tombs are safe, dry, pressurized environments that have enough
room for all manner of miscreants and hermits. A tomb that has
been opened might well have pirates, outlaws, or worse hiding out
until the heat has died down in more civilized systems.
 Sky Tomb Contents
The following list of tomb chambers gives an idea of some of the tended until their infant pods had opened. The decor of the room
contents that might be found in an Ushan sky tomb. To stock your tends to emphasize motifs of budding, flowering, and the rise of
own sepulchres, you can either roll on the table below or pick rooms dawn.
that fit the feel of a given tomb.
3 Breeding Cell
1d6 1d10 Room Type Occasionally a Chittik tomb guard was permitted or instructed to
1 Antechamber spawn new supplies of hatchlings. These cells were retrofitted into
existing chambers. Heavy restraints and a steady flow of water for
2 Blooming Chamber
hydrating the hosts were important to the Chittik purposes, and
3 Breeding Cell a large trough of earth was usually kept for “planting” the Ushan
4 Caretaker’s Quarters remains afterwards. The infants that budded afterward were usually
5 Chapel eaten as delicacies, though a few were usually spared to be sent
1-2 back to the Sun Temple for raising as future hosts. The walls of the
6 Chittik Barracks
breeding cells are usually faintly scratched with last messages from
7 Cold Sleep Pods the prisoners to those who might come after.
8 Communications Control Room
9 Control Room 4 Caretaker’s Quarters
10 Crypt While most tomb pilgrims viewed the cleaning and upkeep of the
1 Docking Bay Controls tomb as a natural part of their pilgrimage, some tombs had resident
caretakers. These rooms were once the personal quarters for such a
2 Dormitory
caretaker, with a hammock-like bed suspended from the ceiling on
3 Empty Room one side and a number of cabinets and shelves to hold their personal
4 Feasting Room possessions. Most clothing and trifles will crumble or collapse with
5 Fountain Room any significant handling, but a few stone or glass items might
3-4 6 Garden Chamber survive. Useful tools or intact books might have been left behind by
their former owners.
7 Holo-audience
8 Larder
5 Chapel
9 Library Pilgrims often felt the need to perform various rites of purification
10 Maneuver Jet Controls and preparation before gazing upon the holy remains of those buried
1 Map Chamber in a sky tomb, and this chapel was designed to satisfy their needs.
2 Medical Facilities Ushan altars are always above the viewer- in this case, molded into
the ceiling in the shape of a stylized sun, always lit almost too brightly
3 Meditation Room to behold. A flowing trough of water is present in operational tombs
4 Memorial for purification ablutions, and a number of books constructed of
5 Offering Vault thin sheets of synthetics are stored in a cabinet on the far side of the
5-6 6 Power Room room. Most of these books will crumble to shards on handling, but
a few scraps of religious poetry and theology may survive.
7 Refueling Controls
8 Sculpture Garden
6 Chittik Barracks
9 Storage Room While less often-visited tombs might have cold sleep pods for the
10 Workshop convenience of their Chittik monitors, popular tombs occasionally
have dedicated barracks for the guardians. These rooms are always
1 Antechamber dark, in sharp contrast to a normally-operating tomb’s interior.
Decorated with glass sculptures and faded paintings in the style Circular beds rest on the floor, along with multiple layers of thin
of the builders’ Dynasty, these antechambers were intended for synthetic blankets for the Chittik, who preferred to burrow into
groups of pilgrims to wait comfortably until there was time and their bedding. Occasionally functional Chittik weaponry can
privacy to offer reverence to the holy remains interred in the tomb. be found racked here. The beetle-men were always casual about
Furnishings line the edges of the room, and most of the decorations weapon security because of the Ushans’ unbroken pacifism.
reference the tomb’s occupant and his or her noble theological
accomplishments in life. 7 Cold Sleep Pods
The tedium and wait between pilgrim visits was intolerable to
2 Blooming Chamber many Chittik guards, and so some tombs were equipped with cold
Some Ushans preferred to die in the sanctified company of the sleep pods to contain the monitors when their services were not
tomb’s occupant. This chamber is dominated by a large circular necessary. Most pods were programmed to open only when the
trough of soil in which the newly-dead Ushan was buried and tomb was entered. There will usually be 2d4 pods, each containing
15
a Chittik warrior. Their weaponry may or may not have survived
the millennia in functional condition. The Chittik will be confused
at the date readout on their pods, but they are intelligent enough
to realize that something terrible must have happened to their
kind. Human prisoners might be captured for interrogation, or
they might imagine them some strange variety of Ushan to be used
as provender and breeding hosts. Interrogation is unlikely to be
fruitful, though Chittik could learn to speak human languages in
time.
8 Communications Control Room
A few tombs were equipped with FTL laser communications systems
for quick consultation with the Sun Temple. The controls for the
comm panel resemble those described in the Control Room entry,
but late-era tombs were also equipped with dual-language interfaces
to allow use by Chittik guards. A canny linguist might be able to get
hints on equivalent words in the two languages. Careful exploration
of the comm system might also unearth a basic translation primer
intended to ease communication with newly-discovered species.
With such a Rosetta stone, a linguist with two weeks of determined
study can learn enough of the language to express basic concepts,
and can spend skill points on the Language skill to become fluent
in Ushan. Note that while the language is essentially the same
throughout Dynasties, the script changes with each Dynasty, and
must be puzzled out for each era. The speed and difficulty of this
will depend on the amount of example text available.
9 Control Room
This room is given over to banks of controls used to manage
the tomb’s power, atmosphere, lighting, and other operational
concerns. Almost all tombs were built to function without oversight
for millennia, but someone who gains access to a control room can
selectively shut down power in other rooms in the tomb. Figuring
out which controls do which things can be potentially hazardous.
First Dynasty controls are square slider-blocks that are moved
left and right and pushed in at various points to indicate choices
in response to a monitor displaying Ushan text. Second Dynasty
controls are round dials which are pushed in to acknowledge a
choice. Third Dynasty tombs use joystick-like controls that are
twisted to select a choice from the monitor. Each era uses a writing
style appropriate to its era, so figuring out what one message means
doesn’t necessarily help with a tomb of a different dynasty.
If you need to come up with a random result for their meddling,
roll 1d6: 1- the lights go off or on in the control room, 2- the tomb’s
entrance pops open or closed, with depressurization occurring in
three rounds, 3- a blaring klaxon begins to sound, and if nothing
is done roll again in three rounds to see what happens, 4- an error
message is spoken in ancient Ushan by a feminine voice, 5- all
power is cut to all systems except the control board, 6- all door
locks in the tomb suddenly spring open- or lock shut if the door
was closed but unlocked.
10 Crypt
Here the honored dead of the Ushans sleep forever in their coffins
of perfectly transparent glass. The bodies within are withered yet
recognizable, and are usually clad in vestments of pearlescent woven
synthetics that crumble to dust if touched. If such a preserved corpse
16
were to be planted in a growing medium- such as that available in
the Brightside’s hydroponic bay- the Ushan would sprout into 1d10
young Ushans within a month.
Crypt rooms are always extremely well-lit unless the asteroid’s light
shunts or solar power catchers have been badly damaged. Decline
-era crypt rooms are stark, with milky, bubbled glass instead of the
perfectly transparent caskets of earlier ages. Third Dynasty tombs
favor wall reliefs of the dead Ushan’s accomplishments among the
living, most of which revolve around some sage religious teaching
that has meaning only to other Ushans.
11 Docking Bay Controls
This bank of panels is much like those described in the Control
Room entry, save that it controls the opening and closing of a
massive pressurized docking bay built into the side of the asteroid.
The bay door is artfully concealed as part of the asteroid’s surface,
but yawns open to show a docking deck large enough to safely
shelter eight fighter-class hulls, two frigates, or one cruiser-class
ship. The deck itself is pressurized when the bay door is closed. If
you add this room, you should take care to include a stairway down
to the deck area, which is generally no more than a large ring of
artificial gravity walkways around the zero-gee mooring area. At the
GM’s discretion, a sunskimmer might still be docked in the bay.
12 Dormitory
While Ushans had no need for food beyond a few minerals, they
required sleep much as other mammals might. Dormitory rooms
tend to be dominated by a single central column with multiple
“branches” running across the ceiling, and multiple hammock-
like beds hanging from these branches. Ushans preferred to
avoid sleeping on objects placed on the floor or ground, as it was
reminiscent of death and planting. The hammocks are quite fragile
and will fall apart with any kind of rough handling.
13 Empty Room
Perhaps the builders intended something for this room that they
never had the chance to construct. For whatever reason, it is bare
and somewhat unfinished, without the decorations to be seen
elsewhere in the tomb.
14 Feasting Room
Some tombs were equipped with larders for the Chittik guards;
other tombs simply encouraged them to select provender from
among the pilgrims that arrived. These rooms are fitted out with
multiple tables with restraints, small cutting implements, and
assorted long-decayed Chittik seasonings and spices. The Chittik
preferred to eat their meals alive as a reminder of their hatchling
stage; it provided them with a feeling of safety and security. Simple
tourniquets, gags, clamps, and compresses are usually stacked near
the spices. The room itself is usually still decorated in the style of
whatever Dynasty built the tomb.
15 Fountain Room
Benches in the Dynastic style circle a large fountain at the center of
this room. In well-kept tombs, a steady plume of feathery water is
jetted from a basin carved in a style appropriate to the Dynasty. In
less well-maintained tombs, the basin is empty or cracked, or the
floor of the room is a half-meter deep in stagnant water. The entire
room might be flooded in the case of a major malfunction, hurling
a torrent of water on the next explorers to open the door.
16 Garden Chamber
Gengineered vines and flowers fill the irrigated planters in this
room, all designed to maintain a steady state of growth, death, and
reseeding even in the absence of tenders. For some garden chambers,
this has worked perfectly. For others, a background radiation leak
might have killed everything in the room, or rendered it hazardous
to explorers. If Chittik or other sapients live in the tomb, they may
have begun to eat the plants, which are coincidentally edible to
humans. A single garden chamber of 6 x 9 meter size can feed up to
five people indefinitely, if unpleasantly.
17 Holo-audience
This room was originally fitted out to provide a pilgrim with the
opportunity to experience a little of the revered occupant’s presence
and teachings. On entering the room, a perfect image of the tomb’s
occupant will step out from behind a screen to greet the visitors
in Ushan. The image will gesture an invitation to the nearby seats,
and will maintain attention on the visitors as it launches into an
extensive religious homily in Ushan, pausing now and then to allow
the listeners to reply. If it recognizes certain Ushan keywords, it will
drop into a brief discursion on the point. All of it is remarkably
lifelike, as the Ushan talent at manipulating light leaves the
hologram with an appearance impossible to distinguish from life
without actually feeling the insubstantiality of the image. The image
will pause regularly to allow listeners to politely depart, but the
amount of theological material each image is capable of reciting is
sufficient to supply an attentive audience for years.
18 Larder
Some tombs were furnished with foodstuffs for the Chittik guards
assigned to monitor the pilgrims. These rooms were stacked
with the provisions most satisfying to those Chittik unfortunate
enough to be assigned such arduous duty; haunches of preserved
Ushan flesh sealed in opaque plastic. The preservation method was
remarkably effective, and the first package opened will reveal the
perfectly preserved head of a young Ushan girl. As only adult Ushan
remains sprouted offspring, Chittik preferred to eat children rather
than “waste” hosts.
19 Library
Rows upon rows of Ushan books fill this room, all of them fashioned
of thin slabs of synthetic. Complex data storage methods were
generally avoided by Ushans, as such devices were prone to failure
long before simple objects. The divine truths contained within these
books was far too important to trust them to unreliable machines.
Many of the books are crumbling and unreadable, but others have
many pages of text in whatever script is appropriate for the Dynasty
that built the tomb. Illustrations are limited, but a few hints of
association can be picked up from the texts. If a character speaks
Ushan, these books are enough to gain a familiarity with the script
of that Dynasty.
20 Maneuver Jet Controls
A few sky tombs were located in potentially unstable regions of the
debris belt, and required the installation of maneuver jets in case
of impending collision. These jets are concealed under thin rock
facades that blow away immediately before the jets are triggered.
The jets use the tomb’s water supply as reaction mass, and there’s
generally enough such fuel to reach any one other location in the
system after two weeks of travel. If the tomb moves at only half that
speed, there will be enough fuel to reach two locations. Dry tanks
require a hundred tons of water to refuel them.
The controls themselves take the same form as those found in
the Control Room described earlier. Meddling with the controls
without being able to read the Ushan writing will set off a loud
alarm klaxon throughout the tomb. If the PCs can’t figure out how
to cancel the order within four rounds, the maneuver jets will fire,
almost certainly in an unhelpful direction.
A tomb can be used as a flying ram, but it is glacially slow compared
even to a system boat. A ship can always evade the tomb, and an
armed station such as the Brightside can blast it to pieces long
before it gets close enough to ram. Against another tomb, however,
a collision will likely destroy both structures.
21 Map Chamber
Ushan holy men and women usually belonged to a particular
theological dynasty, with three major ones defining their culture
and style of architecture. As a token of respect, some tombs included
memorial rooms depicting the holy figures that inspired and guided
the Ushan buried there. In addition to sculptures of these figures,
there is always a square tablet in the center of the room showing
marks and symbols that someone with Navigation-1 or better can
immediately recognize as representing the location of several other
points in the outer rim debris field. These points are the tombs of
the present deceased’s spiritual forebears.
The Ushans destroyed as many of these maps as possible to prevent
the Chittik from learning the location of their dead. Human
explorers might have destroyed more to safeguard their knowledge.
22 Medical Facilities
Some of the more lushly-appointed tombs even had on-site medical
facilities to tend to pilgrims who became ill. These facilities tended
to be fairly minimal, as Ushans had multiple religious prohibitions
against antibiotics. The drugs in the injectors here have all long
since degraded into worthlessness, and the Ushan equivalent of
lazarus patches and medkits have fallen to brittle pieces. On the
wall, however, there is often a molded synthetic panel depicting the
Ushan life cycle from budding to death.
23 Meditation Room
This room invariably is dominated by a massive view screen that
wraps around the walls, floor, and ceiling of the chamber. In
functioning tombs, this view screen will give a perfect view of
the Beast, with those present seemingly standing in empty space.
Ancient kneelers and cushions on the floor are oriented toward the
spectacle. Malfunctioning tombs may give a garbled picture, or
have the focus accidentally swapped to a different room in the tomb
rather than an exterior view of the star.
17
 24 Memorial
The Ushans hated to acknowledge the existence of the Chittik, even
after they had been enslaved by the beetle-men. Still, a passionate
need to remember the dead brought about rooms such as these,
dedicated to the memory of those consumed by the Chittik. Their
insectile overlords tolerated these memorials, viewing them as
simply one more piece of proof that the Ushans were meant only to
be used and devoured.
The walls of a memorial chamber are covered with thousands of
small plaques, each a few centimeters square. On each plaque is an
etched and sometimes colored picture of an Ushan, with a name
and a birth date beneath. There is never a death date; the Ushans
refused to contemplate the manner of death of those destroyed by
the Chittik. Sometimes small possessions or toys beloved by the
dead were left behind as well, remaining for a time before being
sent starward.
25 Offering Vault
The Ushans were relentlessly pacifistic, but the urges of theft were
not unknown to them. In light of that and the desire to show
due respect to offerings made to the dead, some tombs had vaults
specially dedicated to holding valuables. For tombs known to the
Chittik, these vaults will always be empty of anything of utilitarian
worth; only Ushan glass-art, paintings and sculpture will remain,
though these things may be worth something to humans as well.
Tombs with locations that were successfully hidden from the
Chittik might contain useful devices as well.
The door to an offering vault is always very thick and sturdy. Ushan
talent in light manipulation makes laser torches useless against these
doors; explosives or cutting bars might be able to get through it with
sufficient noise and time, though explosions will probably destroy
any fragile art within. Picking the lock can be accomplished with a
Security check against difficulty 8, with only one attempt possible.
26 Power Room
Some tombs have solid-state solar power converters built into the
structure, and so lack any specific locus for power generation. Other
tombs rely on a more efficient but more fragile central converter
to power the tomb. Inflicting more than five points of damage on
a power converter will irreparably damage it and kill all power to
the tomb. The atmosphere will go stale within two hours, and the
pressure doors at the entrance will no longer seal correctly once slid
open. Gravity will also fail, leaving the tomb filled with debris.
First Dynasty power converters resemble crystalline cubes with
controls fixed above numerous squared “cables” that run from the
converter to the nearest walls. Sliding the controls will cut power to
that particular room or system. Second Dynasty power converters
resemble discs rotating a few inches above a glowing blue crystal
pedestal with several markings around its rim. Pushing down on
the floating disk so that its rim touches the edge of the pedestal will
activate or deactivate that power feed. Third Dynasty converters are
floor-to-ceiling bronze-colored pillars with inset tabs that slide in
and out of labeled notches, routing power to or away from different
systems. Decline-era power converters are large, corroded alloy
panels with cables that plug in and out of the power feeds.
18
27 Refueling Controls
The sunskimmers that the Ushans used for travel within a system
had no need for fuel, but occasionally a pilgrim ship equipped
with spike drives would have use for a convenient refueling point
without having to make the multi-day trip in to the Sun Temple.
These controls manage the extrusion of a fuel umbilical from the
asteroid’s body. The umbilical plug requires an Astronautics tech to
convert it for use on human ships, but the purified hydrogen that
the asteroid creates out of its water supply is quite serviceable for
fueling human spike drives. Most asteroids carry enough water to
fuel many ships before supplies start to flag, but asteroids that have
run dry will need to have liquid water shipped in.
The controls for the refueling equipment vary depending on the
Dynasty that built the tomb; details are listed under the Control
Room entry. Random meddling with the controls has a 20% chance
of causing a sudden, uncontrolled jet of liquid hydrogen to be shot
into near space. Any shuttle docked nearby will be covered in it, and
the frozen liquid will have to be chipped off the loading door before
the ship can be entered again.
28 Sculpture Garden
A statue stands at every grid intersection on the room map, each one
depicting an Ushan of importance to the tomb’s occupant- wife,
husband, parent, teacher, or other dear one. The style of the statue
depends on the Dynasty; First Dynasty statues tend toward blocky
Cubist works focusing on points of mass on the statue. Second
Dynasty statues are abstract, flowing figures that use stylized lines
and curves to denote male and female. Third Dynasty statues are
distinctly representative and detailed. Decline-era statues are little
more than roughly-shaped pillars. All statues have names and titles
carved at their base.
29 Storage Room
Racks of drinking vessels, spare hammocks, cleaning supplies, and
boxes of the minerals Ushans needed for health are all the usual
contents of storage rooms. Many of the boxes show images of
Ushan life on their homeworld, with two bright suns and pictures
of Ushans building temples, fashioning art, and using the product
happily. Decline-era packaging will show nothing but stark
identification lettering.
30 Workshop
Small tools, half-assembled devices, and other parts of a tomb in
need of maintenance are usually spread out in this workshop. The
laser cutting tools fixed to the walls are remarkably effective, and
work twice as fast as anything humans make, but they cannot be
removed from the workshop without destroying them.

Ushan technicians and artisans were possessed of a level of expertise
much like that of post-Scream humanity. Their society was
peaceful and sedate, with little interest in technical advancement
or matters unrelated to theology and simple enjoyment of life.
Still, the Ushans possessed remarkable skill in the manipulation
and channeling of light. Illumination was both nourishment and a
symbol of the divine, and while their tools were never intended for
use as weaponry, some have more functionality than their makers
intended. Marius Rochambeau on Brightside Station will pay up
to 20,000 credits for Ushan artifacts. Finding buyers on different
worlds can be more difficult, but they might fetch almost twice the
price if sold directly to an interested collector.
Everlights are small, thumb-sized crystals that give a constant,
unwavering illumination out to thirty meters. Everlights require
no power, but they cannot be deactivated short of smashing them.
Marius will pay 50 credits for each everlight recovered.
Glass Cable is found incorporated in some Ushan structures. The
cable is transparent, extremely flexible, and strong as TL 4 rope.
The optical qualities of the cable are such that a person can look at
one cut end and see a bubble-eyed view of whatever is occurring in
front of the other end. A simple magnifying lens is helpful but not
mandatory. Marius will pay 50 credits for each ten meters.
Mantles of Light are flowing Ushan garments fashioned of myriad
tiny glass-like threads, all oriented to channel the ambient light into
a luminous halo around the wearer. While beautiful to look at, they
also render the wearer very difficult to injure with laser weaponry.
Attackers user lasers treat the wearer as if they were AC 1, though
the mantles are only AC 7 against other attacks. The mantles need
to be fastened snugly to the wearer to channel the light correctly,
and so cannot be worn with other forms of armor. Marius will pay
1,000 credits for a mantle of light.
Penitence Wraps are thin, tough weaves of glassine fabric, one side
smooth and nondescript while the other is covered in lamentations
and declarations of repentance for sins of acquisitiveness and pride.
When the edges of the cloth are brought together, they cling snugly.
Originally used for self-mortification, penitence wraps render
a wrapped wearer or object almost invisible as light is channeled
around them. The wrap must be sealed completely for it to function,
and it is impossible to see outside of it. Noticing a wrapped object
or person is very difficult; if they are still, it’s normally a Perception
skill check against difficulty 10, and impossible at more than 20
meters distance. Marius will pay 2,000 credits for a penitence wrap.
Radiation Sinks are small belt-mounted discs that appear white
when wholly unused. When worn by a human-sized creature and
powered by an Ushan power cell, the disk will absorb harmful
radiation. Each time the wearer fails a radiation saving throw, the
disk absorbs the radiation harmlessly and a wedge turns black on
the disk. When the tenth radiation save is failed, the power cell is
drained and the sink becomes useless. Marius will pay 500 credits
for a completely unused sink.
Ushan Xenotech
Shimmerglass art is composed of a very tough, luminous glass cut
and shaped to form intricate patterns of refracted light. During the
Decline, Ushan artisans secretly fashioned some pieces of art to serve
as keys. Messages encrypted in seemingly ordinary religious texts
could be viewed through these works of art, revealing the secret
location of sky tombs, hidden fastnesses, or supply caches. Some
messages required multiple pieces of art to be overlaid. Marius will
pay 1d6 * 100 credits for any given piece of shimmerglass art.
Stickbeams appear as cigar-sized tubes with rocker switches on
one side and power indicators striped beside. When the switch is
depressed, a narrow, bright-green beam projects out to a maximum
distance of 100 meters. If the switch is rocked back, the object is
smoothly levitated toward the holder, and a push forward sends the
object away out to the maximum range. The force is minor, and
cannot manipulate objects that weigh more than ten kilograms. An
Ushan power cell fuels up to 20 uses of the stickbeam. Marius will
pay 500 credits for each stickbeam.
Ushan Cutting Torches are small, hand-held laser cutting tools. The
lasers are programmed with automatic safeties that turn them off
immediately if they threaten to damage organic materials of any
kind, but they can deliver 2d6 damage per round to inanimate
objects. A standard interior bulkhead can have a man-sized hole
carved in it with five minutes of work, and a ship or station hull can
be pierced with fifteen minutes of cutting. The torches use Ushan
power cells, and last for fifteen minutes of steady use with a full cell.
Marius will pay 500 credits for a cutting torch.
Ushan Power Cells are small, bullet-shaped cells designed for
insertion into powered Ushan equipment. A tech with Tech/
Postech-1 or better can retrofit the cells into a type A power cell
housing, where it will provide twice as much power as a comparable
human cell. Ushan power cells cannot be recharged by human
technology, however, and Ushan tech cannot be powered by human
power sources. Marius will pay 20 credits for each power cell
recovered.
Sky Tomb XP Rewards
The following adventures assume XP rewards equal to the value
of the credit chips, valuable commodities, and Ushan artifacts
pulled from the tomb. Human gear salvage is not counted for
XP rewards. Assuming the PCs pillage each tomb completely, the
total reward in the Empty Graves is 3000 XP, the Cold Tomb
offers 4820 XP, and the House of Echoes grants 6420 XP, as the
Sun Tower artifact should not be counted for XP purposes. These
awards can be adjusted up or downward to accomodate larger or
smaller PC groups.
Characters who glean carefully can come away with substantially
more money from selling looted human gear, even given the
limited prices that Roland Lomax pays for salvage. Still, you
should not be too concerned about character wealth. They need
500 credits apiece just to buy passage off the station, after all, in
addition to their air taxes and other incidentals.
19
Empty Graves
Brightside Station is the largest and most self-sufficient of the
settlements in Hard Light, but it is not the only one. The sky tombs
offer safety and privacy for all manner of occupants, and some find
it useful to have a bolt hole amid the outer rim debris.
Empty Graves is one such pirate nest, ruled by the invidious,
shock-bearded Captain Ramsley. Raiders from nearby systems can
dock to sell their loot and captives to unscrupulous merchants and
partake of some of the questionable recreations to be had in a den
of soulless space reavers. The privacy of visitors is ensured by the
Beast’s background radiation and the numerous asteroids in the
debris field. It is all but impossible to detect an incoming ship unless
the craft doing the scanning is also in the outer rim.
Empty Graves is known to Brightside Station, though the settlement
is supposedly an “artist’s colony”. The ramshackle system shuttle
that makes the trip in monthly to buy supplies gives no contrary
impression, but the locals on Brightside are fairly certain that very
bad things happen out on Empty Graves. As long as the visitors pay
in cash and keep their trouble off the station, Dutta and the other
chiefs would just as soon ignore them.
Roland Lomax has warm ties with the pirate den, and usually makes
a trip out in their system shuttle every month or two. Given his ban
at the Clouds and Rain and his own uncouth tastes, Empty Graves
offers him the kind of entertainment he can’t get in a civilized
establishment. It was on one such trip that a boozy pirate showed
him a Geostellar Mining Industries dataslab that he’d picked off
a dead lifeboat he found in Hard Light. Though the pirate didn’t
realize it, it was an itemized record of Yash Dutta’s embezzlement
and the ruin it caused GMI. Lomax bought it as a “souvenir”.
Now Lomax works to cement his power base on Brightside in
preparation for a fascinating meeting with the bank auditor that
always arrives with the novium transport. In the meanwhile he
continues his monthly trips to Empty Graves.
20
The pirates of Empty Grave are likely to be willing to deal with
PCs unless the characters give obvious signs of trouble. Those who
seem to have business to do or who want to sample the settlement’s
dubious pleasures will be allowed three days’ leave to do so before
a 10 credit per day per head air tax is levied. If Lomax finds out
they’ve been to Empty Grave, he’ll make it privately clear to them
that he does not want the settlement’s nature discussed, and that a
failure of discretion would result in tragic accidents. If proof of the
settlement’s nature does come out, Lomax will be humiliated and
lose much of his support among the miners. This won’t stop him
from trying to overthrow Dutta, of course.
The pirates have a rusty, driveless system shuttle docked on the
asteroid that they use to make runs to Brightside. The shuttle is
stolen, of course, and utterly unsalable along normal lines. Dutta
would be willing to take it off the PC’s hands for 10,000 credits,
however, assuming that they don’t want to use it for their own
explorations.
Map Key
1 Entrance
The pirates will assume that any unannounced visitors are either
fellow pirates or merchants. They’ll maintain their “artist’s colony”
facade until after a ship has docked and its passengers have debarked.
The pirates won’t allow more than a half-dozen newcomers in at
a time. After the visitors get a good look at what Empty Graves
actually is, those who accept it in stride will be allowed to do
business, while those that look to be overly-righteous tourists will
be attacked.
2 Guest Barracks
Visitors are lodged here amid grubby bunk beds and walls of First
Dynasty Ushan bas-reliefs long since defaced by bored pirates.

3 Vault
This chamber was once an offering vault until the pirates repurposed
its storage cells as holding cells for their hostages and plunder. Cell
A contains four Ushan shimmerglass icons worth 100 credits each.
Cell B contains three heavy crates of valuable industrial alloys worth
500 credits, each crate counting as eight encumbrance items. Cell
C holds stacks of clothing taken from their victims, including an
Ushan Mantle of Light. Cell D contains Thad Bowman, a teenage
boy who has spun an elaborate lie about being a rich merchant’s
son. Cell E holds Sofia Lucullo, a skilled pilot taken when her
ship was boarded; the pirate’s leader, Captain Ramsley, wishes to
persuade her that her future would be better as a pirate than as meat
for Gerta, but Sofia remains stubbornly resistant. Cell F is empty.
One pirate is always on guard in this room, and only Captain
Ramsley has the keys to cells A-C. Both he and Gerta have keycards
to cells D-F. Opening the cells without the keys requires a Security
check against difficulty 8, with only one attempt per PC.
Pirate: HP 3, Att +2/1d6+1 pistol, AC 5 woven armor, Save 15+,
Morale 8
4 Lavatories and Showers
Showers and toilets have been installed in this former storeroom for
the benefit of the pirates and their prisoners.
5 Captain Ramsley’s Quarters
Stolen silks, plundered trifles, and the detritus of years of thieving
decorate this room in barbaric opulence. 900 credits worth of gaudy
baubles and credit chips can be found by a thorough plundering
Captain Ramsley is here when not holding court in room 11.
Ramsley: HP 20, Att +4/1d8+1 monoblade, AC 4/combat field
uniform, Save 14+, Morale 10.
6 Comm and Refueling Controls
One pirate technician is always on duty here, monitoring
the asteroid’s exterior for visitors and communicating
with any ships that hail. The asteroid’s refueling facilities
are also controlled from here. A locker along the back
contains four vacc suits and tool sets for Astronautics
and Postech technicians. The tech’s camera also monitors
room 1, and he can hit a tomb-wide alarm if needed.
Tech: HP 6, Att +3/1d6+1 pistol, AC 9, Save 15+, Morale
8
7 Common Barracks
Seven double-bunk beds serve the needs of the pirates here.
Three can usually be found here at any hour. The lockers
here contain two pistols, 40 rounds of ammunition, two
suits of woven armor, and 200 credit chips.
Pirates (3): HP 3, Att +2/1d6+1 pistol, AC 9, Save 15+,
Morale 8
8 Privacy Room
This room is set aside for pirates in need of a private nook
for conversation or relaxation. A grubby cot stands in the
corner next to a chipped glass Ushan washing basin.
9 The Pens
Gerta, a leathery-faced pirate woman with a stun baton and pistol
runs the Graves’ brothel with the help of a pair of pockmarked
assistants. The half-dozen inmates are all hostages with no ransoms
anticipated, and Gerta couldn’t be more indifferent to their use so
long as she is paid.
Gerta: HP 8, Att +3/1d6+1 pistol, AC 7/armored undersuit, Save
14+, Morale 9
Thugs (2): HP 3, Att +2/1d4 club, AC 9, Save 15+, Morale 7
10 Larder
Rations and common supplies are kept here. Long Toby and
Captain Ramsley both have keycards. Opening the lock without
them requires a Security check at difficulty 7, with one attempt
possible per PC.
11 Playroom
Pirates drink and roister around tables in this former First Dynasty
Ushan crypt, with the occupied glass coffin of High Priestess Helani
used as a dice table, a cigarette stuffed between the corpse’s lips.
Pirates (3): HP 3, Att +2/1d6+1 pistol, AC 9, Save 15+, Morale 8
12 The Cookhouse
Long Toby, a rail-lean cook with a perpetual scowl serves up reheated
rations from a jury-rigged solar cooker array at the end of the room.
If attacked, he’ll bellow for help and hurl a pot of boiling stew at
the nearest enemy, doing 1d4 damage unless the victim makes a
successful Evasion save.
Long Toby: HP 8, Att +3/1d4 knife, AC 9, Save 14+, Morale 8
21
The Cold Tomb
The vast majority of the sky tombs were carved out of stony
iron asteroids, but here and there an Ushan architect thirsted for
something more exotic. The Cold Tomb is one such creation, a
Second Dynasty tomb cut from the core of a massive iceball. In its
prime, the Cold Tomb was a wonder of the sector, with the Beast’s
light pouring through the ice to scatter on the carefully-driven
prismatic reflectors the architect had planted in the iceball.
With the Decline, the careful maintenance the tomb required was
no longer possible. The Chittik had no reason to permit their slaves
such frivolous effort, and while pilgrims still came to the tomb, they
were fewer. The beetle-men installed automatic defenses against
interlopers and let the tomb decay. Dust and debris has clouded the
surface of the iceball and damaged the solar collectors. Power is only
a trickle of what it should be.
As a consequence, the temperature regulators have slowly failed over
the years. The corridors and rooms of the Cold Tomb have filled
with dark, icy water and the chambers have silted with the slow
decay of millennia. Yet despite this, the deathless Chittik guardians
wait patiently in the black water for the opening of the tomb’s door.
These mechanical warders have their duty, and they will execute it.
An Icy Doom
Vacc suits are rated for underwater operation, but the cold water
is a much more effective leech of heat than the vacuum of space.
A vacc suit needs to swap in a fresh type A power cell every thirty
minutes or the PC will start to suffer hypothermia. Every five
minutes without heat, the PC must make a Physical Effect saving
throw or else lose 1 point of Strength and Constitution. A character
reduced below Strength 3 cannot move, and one reduced below
Constitution 3 will die. Attribute point losses to hypothermia can
be restored by an hour’s warmth and treatment by a medkit, or else
a day’s recovery if a medkit is lacking.
Aside from the chill, communications are complicated by the fact
that radios do not function underwater. Communication in the
tomb relies on hand signals, lengths of comm hardline plugged in
between suits, or pressing helmets together to let the vibrations of
speech carry through. Visibility underwater is limited by the murky
water. A character can see no more than ten meters in any direction.
Some players might try to think of some way to dry out the tomb
before entering. Whatever method is used would have to be very
slow and gradual, bleeding off only small amounts of water at once.
Rapidly pumping out the interior would cause the iceball to blow
apart from the quick pressure changes. It’s possible that a slow
method of bleed might work to empty the tomb, but most hooks
meant to get the players to the iceball won’t give them the month
they need to drain the tomb safely.
Players may also recognize the value of the iceball as a water source.
The ice can be mined for that purpose, but the entire tomb must be
explored first; a cutting laser that hit an unmapped pocket of water
would have explosive consequences to the iceball. The liquid water
could be pumped out directly, but as noted above it would have to
be a very slow process.
22
Modern lasers and projectile weapons are designed for operating in
hostile environments, and so they will work underwater. The water
is murky, but it doesn’t quite qualify as hindering laser weaponry.
Use of grenades and other explosives is extremely dangerous
underwater; the pressure wave will extend twice as far and do
twice as much damage. Substantial explosives use runs the risk of
destroying the whole tomb.
Movement is cumbersome underwater. All movement rates are
cut in half due to the water’s resistance. The streamlined shape of
the Chittik drones allows them to move at normal speed. Thrown
objects have only half ordinary maximum range. Characters can
swim upward at one-third their normal movement rate. Many
rooms have very high ceilings due to the flux of erosion and
refreezing, with some rising as high as 20 meters.
A character’s vacc suit may be cut by a danger in the tomb or by
a hit from a Chittik drone’s claws when they have 10 or fewer
hit points. Such a hit has a 50% chance of cutting a vacc suit in
addition to whatever damage may be done. Characters can patch
a vacc suit with one of its emergency sealing patches, but the cold
water that enters a suit will severely strain the suit’s heating element
and immediately drain the power cell. A character must replace the
cell within five minutes or they will begin to suffer hypothermia.
Lazarus patches and medical assistance can be applied to a character
in a vacc suit, as they are equipped with emergency med ports for
standardized pharmaceutical sprays. Biopsionic help also functions
normally. Any medical attention beyond resuscitation and basic
healing will require an air-filled area, however.
Map Key
1 Entrance
The rounded benches that line the walls of this chamber are as
brittle as thin glass. Plaques showing High Priest Ilmanu in the
pride of life are embedded in the ice of the wall, but the millennia of
freezing and thawing has left them almost buried, only dark outlines
beneath several centimeters of ice. A rug of woven Ushan glass fiber
is beneath the thin layer of silt on the floor, worth 300 credits to a
salvager. As soon as all of the PCs have entered the tomb the Chittik
drones will lock the pressure doors. If one or more characters insist
on remaining outside, the Chittik will trigger the lock as soon as a
PC ventures beyond the entrance room.
2 Dead Sargasso
This chamber was a garden once, and the preserved fronds of dead
vines and the withered blossoms of the gengineered plants now
wave slowly in the torpid current. It is impossible to see more than
a meter through the growth.
3 Blackened Sun
Once a meditation chamber, this rounded room is dominated by
a vast, stylized sun carved into the far wall’s ice. The centuries of
slow freeze and thaw have distorted it into a misshapen, half-melted
shape crusted with bulging growths and pockmarks. Entrance
into the room will activate a half-ruined illumination system that

directs light through the ice icon. The distortions send wild shadows
through the room, blotches like a leprous face behind the glowing
ice. Four shimmerglass icons decorate the walls of the room, each
one roughly the size of a human forearm and worth 200 credits to
a buyer.
4 The Icy Dead
The frozen corpses of those Ushan slaves unfortunate enough to
have sought shelter in the Cold Tomb have been embedded in the
walls and floor here. They were left here by the Chittik drones, as
the guardians lack any specifically authorized location for corpse
disposal. There must be at least thirty corpses of all ages frozen
in piles here, some partially embedded and others almost wholly
entombed. The long immersion has left the corpses unable to sprout.
5 Repair Workshop
The ice tomb required more maintenance than was usual for an
Ushan sky tomb, and so this small room was devoted to the tools
and supplies necessary to keep it running. Much of the equipment
has decayed under the centuries of immersion, but an Ushan
cutting torch and a half-dozen Ushan power cells are still intact in a
waterproof case on the aft workbench. The torch will not function
underwater but can endure immersion without damage.
A cabinet on the wall is partially sealed by ice. If chipped
free, it can be opened to reveal an Ushan thermal suit
occupied by the waterlogged corpse of its wearer, killed
when the drones shut down the tomb and “stored” where
his suit belonged. The suit itself is worthless, but careful
investigation will reveal a sheet of folded synthetic on
which is sketched a rough map of the tomb annotated by
Second Dynasty script indicating maintenance troubles.
6 Vortex Pump
Motion in this room will activate an emergency pump
on centered in the middle of the floor. This twelve-
centimeter hole creates an enormously powerful suction,
though the water drained promptly pours back into the
tomb elsewhere. Characters in the room must all make
Tech saving throws; the character who fails it by most is
dragged over the vent and plugs it with his or her body.
If all save, they managed to grab on to furniture or brace
themselves in time. The vent shuts off after one round, but
a trapped character remains sealed to the pump inflow.
Freeing a trapped character requires either an hour of very
careful chipping at the ice or a more abrupt yank that will
tear the victim’s suit.
7 The Book Clouds
A sluggish pump sets a slow, whirling vortex of decayed
synthetic book pages and ring-pierced bindings circling
in the darkness of this silted library. It is impossible for
a character to see anything not directly adjacent to them
while in the room. A Chittik drone clings to the ceiling
here, and will make a raking attack at one of the characters
sixty seconds after the first PC enters the room, surprising
the character unless the victim makes a Perception check
at difficulty 10. Characters that explicitly look up will
see the drone on the ceiling; otherwise only the character
being attacked will get a glimpse of it. PCs will get one
round to attack the drone in return before it races out of the ruined
library toward room 14. Any character not within arm’s reach of the
drone has an automatic 50% chance of missing due to the limited
visibility, no matter their hit roll.
Chittik Drone A: HP 12, Att +5/+5/1d4+1 each claw, AC 5, Save
14+, Morale 12
8 Murky Map
Stone statues of Ushan High Priests stand around the periphery
of this room, the silt halfway to a visitor’s knee. At the center of
the room, a few inches below the silt’s surface, is a meter-square
stone table depicting the location of four other sky tombs- all of
them known to the Chittik, and so perhaps equipped with their
own guardians.
9 Silted Crypt
The glass sarcophagus of the High Priest Ilmanu has maintained
its seal against the water, though it is crusted over with a thin layer
of opaque mineral salts. A character who scrapes away the salts
will be able to see the perfectly preserved corpse of the Second
Dynasty hierarch and the functional Mantle of Light he wears.
23
The sarcophagus can be lifted and moved by characters with a total
Strength score of 20; the air sealed in it help gives it buoyancy.
The floor of the crypt is knee-deep in a silt of soft, clinging dark
muck. Substantial activity will churn up the muck, giving lasers a -4
penalty to hit and blinding everyone in the room.
10 Drowned Sculpture Garden
A pseudo-algae bloom has left the stylized Ushan statues here
bearded in long sheets of clammy, opaque plant life. A current from
a failing pump leaves the algae sheets slowly billowing in the murky
water.
11 The Pearl Razors
A crate of Ushan mineral supplements was carelessly left here
during the last days of the tomb. The millennia of immersion has
reacted with the minerals to create a vast number of lacy, delicate,
razor-sharp crystalline growths along the floor, wall, and ceiling of
this room. A character that attempts to enter the room without
destroying the growths must make an Evasion saving throw or find
their suit sliced by a crystal and suffer 1d4 damage.
Destroying the growths is simple, and they shatter into tiny, harmless
particles, but if characters smash them with a melee weapon, they
run a 20% chance of a suit cut for every 3 x 3 meter section they
clear. Crystals can be smashed with ranged weaponry, but it requires
ten rounds of laser or projectile ammunition per 3 x 3 section
cleared. Prudent characters may gather up detritus from elsewhere
in the tomb to throw at the crystals; the water slows impact, but the
crystals are extremely fragile.
The Chittik drones are intimately familiar with the crystals, and can
pass through them freely without danger of injury.
12 Control Room
Round, Second Dynasty-style knobs and buttons cover the control
panel on the fore side of the room. A view screen gives a slightly
murky view of the asteroid’s exterior and the entrance area. Most
of the controls no longer do anything, but one readout shows a
straight horizontal line above an orange knob. If the knob is turned,
the line will become a circle and the outer pressure doors will
unlock. Someone conversant in Second Dynasty Ushan script can
read enough of the board controls to figure out how to safely pump
out the ice tomb in only five days.
A locked, air-tight cabinet is frozen to the aft wall. A successful
Security check at difficulty 8 will open it, or ten points of damage
inflicted. Inside are the artifacts the drones gathered from the tomb
in preparation for collection by their masters. The contents include
an Ushan stickbeam, a penitence wrap, six Ushan power cells, and
twenty meters of coiled glass cable.
Chittik Drones B and C: HP 12 and 16, Att +5/+5/1d4+1 each
claw, AC 5, Save 14+, Morale 12
24
13 Chittik Drone Bay
The tomb’s complement of automated Chittik guardian drones are
stored here, inert until the exterior door of the tomb is opened.
Security feeds give them a clear idea of the number of intruders,
and their instructions are very clear about exterminating any non-
Chittik who enter the tomb. The drones do not have true AI, but
they are very familiar with the terrain of the tomb and can control
some of its functions from the nearby control room- such as sealing
the pressure door after the intruders have entered. The drones prefer
to strike quickly and retreat, and will stand and fight only when the
intruders reach the control room.
14 Concert Chamber
Characters near this room will hear a low, melancholy music
emanating from the chamber ahead, the sound vibrations transmitted
through the water by an ancient speaker system. On entering the
room, characters will behold a hologram of an Ushan woman dressed
in elaborate robes, singing a funeral lament for the dead High Priest
Ilmanu. The water distorts the projection in disquieting fashion,
her perfectly lifelike seeming suddenly distorting and bulging. The
interference often creates multiple replications of the image around
the room, shapes suddenly appearing before the characters only to
fade away a moment later.
If a Chittik drone has retreated to this room, it will attack intruders
and fight to the death. The shifting holographic images do not
confuse the machine’s sensors, but the PCs suffer a -2 to hit from
the leaping images and sudden distortions that ripple around them.
Chittik Guardian Drone
Armor Class 5 No. Appearing 1-4
Hit Dice 2+2 Saving Throw 14+
Attack Bonus +5/+5 Movement 30’
Damage 1d4+1/1d4+1 claws Morale 12
Guardian drones are autonomous guard robots that the Chittik
employed in places that required no sophisticated monitoring.
The guardians are well-equipped for the execution of any non-
Chittik that violate the area. Guardian drones do not have true
AI, but they can carry out direct, simple instructions from any
living Chittik.
The drones appear to be man-sized constructs of glossy black
plating and sharp edges, beetle-like and resembling a Chittik in
shape. They have three pairs of legs- one for locomotion, one
for manipulation, and one equipped with brutal claws. Well-
maintained guardian drones can omit their claw attacks to fire
an integral projectile weapon that does 1d10 damage at +5 to hit
with a range of 50/100. The drones in the ice tomb have long
since used up their ammunition for this weapon, and will only
use their claws.

The first reported discovery of a sky tomb was two years ago, in
3198, when an errant novium transport picked up an anomalous
asteroid in the outer rim. The locals on Brightside Station believe
that this was the first discovery of a sky tomb; in actuality, several
pirate ships have stumbled across tombs in the past few decades,
but none of them survived to pass along word of their discoveries.
The House of Echoes is one such tomb. A passing pirate frigate
discovered the Third Dynasty crypt in 3181, and dispatched a small
party to investigate the interior. When the explorers never returned,
the ship’s captain elected to come back later with a stronger party.
He never got the chance, as he and his ship were blasted to perdition
by a defense boat in a neighboring system three weeks later.
The pirate exploratory crew had awoken the Chittik monitors from
their millennia of cold sleep. The insectile guardians captured the
pirate interlopers and methodically interrogated them for news
of the outside world before impregnating them as hosts for a new
generation of Chittik. The pirates died hideously, but the new
spawn would have time to plant the remains of the Ushan High
Priest Amuran interred here and grow a new crop of Ushans for the
next generation to parasitize. In the meanwhile, they could wait for
another human ship to find them and “convince” its pilot to take
them to the concealed Chittik stronghold-tomb that was originally
the monitors’ base in the Hard Light system.
The ten Ushans grown from Amuran’s remains shared something of
the High Priest’s memories of the glorious Third Dynasty, but they
were raised in the creche of the Chittik. Fed on light, watered, and
isolated from their keepers, they were intended simply as breeding
stock for their Chittik masters. Once they were adult, they could
be parasitized and their remains planted to begin anew the ancient
cycle of master and host.
These Ushans, however, had been raised without the relentless
pacifism of their former culture. The Chittik overestimated their
natural peacefulness, and when the first two of them were culled
out of the group for breeding, the remaining eight plotted rebellion.
When next the Chittik arrived to collect more Ushans, the young
prisoners attacked and killed several of the insectoids before
retreating to a far corner of the tomb.
When the PCs first arrive at the tomb, the situation inside will be a
tense standoff between the Chittik and the Ushans. The remaining
six Ushans are fortified within the High Priest’s burial area in the
northeast part of the tomb, while the Chittik largely control the
western end. Two of the Ushans have recently given forth new
swarms of hatchlings, while two more Ushans have been captured
and parasitized.
The interior communications and monitoring equipment was badly
damaged in the fighting, and the Chittik will have no idea that a
ship has docked at the tomb until the PCs actually encounter them.
The immediate response of discovered Chittik will be to flee to their
leader, Tik-Bzurr, and inform her of the new hosts. The Chittik will
attempt to capture the PCs alive for interrogation and eventually
use as hosts those not required for operating their spaceship. The
Chittik learned English from the pirates before consuming them,
The House of Echoes
and may try to talk intruders into letting down their guard.
The Ushans may well take the opportunity in the chaos to strike
at the Chittik, but they will be wary and fearful of humans unless
convinced that no harm is meant to them. All of them remember
and speak a late dialect of Ushan. They are armed with clubs, knives,
and improvised melee weaponry, though three of them have Chittik
projectile weapons.
The Chittik still have several functional projectile weapons of their
own and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, along with the Chittik
equivalent of stun batons intended for subduing Ushan hosts. They
are acutely aware of their limited numbers, and will tend to retreat
if they take casualties. The Chittik will only use lethal weaponry in
dire need; they vastly prefer to capture prey with their stun batons.
Map Key
1 Entrance Area
The entrance area is unguarded and empty save for walls of bronze
alloy inscribed with bas-relief images of reverent Ushan pilgrims.
2 Garden Chamber
Wildly extravagant blooms of red and orange and purple hang from
fruited vines, a narrow, winding path leading through the thick
foliage toward the northern exit. Many of the fruit plants look to
have been harvested recently. The fruit itself is bland but edible.
3 Cold Sleep Pods
Areas 3A-3D each contain two empty Chittik cold sleep pods. The
blackened metal and spidery construction of the pods are a sharp
contrast to the Ushan decorations worked in bronze panels on the
walls.
4 Chittik Barracks
The Chittik monitors rest here on low circular pallets, sleeping on
their bellies. Four sleeping Chittik will be here on the PC’s first
entrance, assuming they make no undue noise in entering.
Chittik (4): HP 5, Att +3/1d4 claw, AC 7/chitin, Save 15+, Morale
10
5 Refueling Controls
Room 5A contains fuel line couplers designed to match the Ushan
refueling cables to standard human ship intakes. Room 5B contains
reference manuals for refueling various Ushan and Chittik craft.
The House of Echoes and its Contents
This sky tomb was assembled using the random generation
process outlined earlier, and most rooms were picked or rolled off
the sky tomb room selection chart. The tomb key includes notes
on any unusual features in a given room, and any creatures that
might normally be encountered there. For a fuller description
of the features of a given room, you can consult the Sky Tomb
Contents section earlier in this module.
25
26
Most are so decayed that only hints and outlines can be made out.
Room 5C contains flow controls for the tomb’s water supplies, and
can cut off the water to any of the tomb’s rooms; the Chittik have
yet to think of using the controls to parch the escaped Ushans.
6 Antechamber
Originally intended as an antechamber for pilgrims waiting their
turn to offer respects to the High Priest Amuran’s remains, this
room is now empty of everything except the wall bas-reliefs.
7 Guard Room
A force of Chittik guards are ensconced in this barren room to
ensure the breeding chambers beyond are not disturbed.
Chittik (2): HP 5, Att +3/1d8 stun baton, AC 7/chitin, Save 15+,
Morale 10
8 Place of Husks
The dried husks of the seven Chittik that have died in the tomb since
first awakening are kept here, resting in state atop low improvised
biers. The air has a harsh, acidic smell. A single small white disk has
been placed on the top of three of the hollowed exoskeleton; they
are Ushan radiation sinks, each of them containing a fresh cell.
9 Breeding Cell
Opening the door to this room will release an ankle-depth swarm
of Chittik hatchlings, cockroach-like creatures that will crawl
voraciously over any non-Chittik intruders. The bites are painful
but harmless. A pair of long tubs filled with earth contain the
buried remains of these hatchlings’ hosts, while two living Ushan
hosts have been sealed inside coffin-sized opaque plastic boxes.
Small perforations in the boxes will allow for the hatchlings that
eventually spawn from them to escape, while being too narrow to
allow the hungry spawn outside to enter. A liquid drip from a wall
faucet keeps the two Ushans hydrated. The Ushans are relatively
early in the implantation process, and show no outward signs of it;
within a week their abdomens will begin to swell, and after another
week the hatchlings will eat their way out. If rescued, they will
require medical attention at Brightside Station if the eggs are to be
extracted without killing the hosts.
10 Garden Chamber
This little-used room is filled with columns of spongy lavender plant
life, all exhaling a steady flow of purified air. Hidden at the back
is a small satchel left by an ancient pilgrim containing two small
shimmerglass icons worth 250 credits apiece.
11 Memorial
Room 11A is filled with at least a thousand dried seedpod rattles,
infant swaddling wraps, and small toys, each labeled with an Ushan
child’s name. Room 11B has a holoprojector cycling through
images of 23,544 Ushans, projecting each one for ten seconds with
remarkable vividness. Each projection is labeled with the victim’s
name in Third Dynasty glyphs. Room 11C is filled with thousands
of prayers for the dead, each one written on a small slip of crumbling
synthetic “paper” fastened to a colored bas-relief tile of the dead
Ushan. Room 11D is partly filled with prayers, but also includes
two pieces of Chittik exoskeleton on which someone has drawn
the faces of two Ushans- the dead planted in room 9, memorialized
by the surviving Ushans in room 29. They yet retain hope for the
other two.
12 Storerooms
Ancient drinking vessels, faded synthetic cloth, a few venerable
musical instruments of brittle, wood-like synthetics, and other
commonplaces fill these five storerooms. Folded neatly under one
of the crumbling white sheets is a Penitence Wrap.
13 Blooming Chamber
The earth has been scooped from the circular central trough and
transported to the basins in room 9.
14 Power Room
These controls are old and unreliable. Manipulating them has a
20% chance of inflicting a shock that does 1d6 damage as if it were
a stun baton. Resting on one of the tables near the control panel is
an Ushan stickbeam and three Ushan power cells.
15 The Bone Niches
Decorative Ushan statuettes once stood in the niches on the
northern and southern walls of this room. They are now occupied by
the split and marrow-sucked bones of the pirate away team that first
discovered the tomb. A small golden locket among the bones has
a tiny holo-portrait within of a young man embracing a beautiful
young woman. The locket is worth no more than 5 credits.
16 VIP Withdrawing Room
The ornate decorations here were originally intended to delight the
occasional important pilgrim who wished to visit the tomb. They
could wait here for their turn, apart from the common crowd.
17 Old Breeding Cell
Before the Chittik had the chance to refit room 9 for their purposes,
they implanted the captured pirates here. Nothing remains from
those days except for a few lines of scratching on the carved wall,
recording the names of the pirates Anna, Big Joaquin, Hawkins,
and Sigur, the August 17, 3181 date of their capture, and the half-
illegible comment “...r gona wait for nother and fill them up too.
Pray the Serpent’s Tooth comes back. Pray they don’t get her too.”
18 Holo-Audience
A holo-audience of High Priest Amuran welcome any visitors,
looking up from his yellowed desk to greet them in genteel Ushan
tones before commencing a lengthy disquisition on religious
matters. A shimmerglass religious mandala hung upon the wall
would be worth 500 credits to Marius Rochambeau.
19 Library
The books all revolve around High Priest Amuran’s particular school
of theology, and most of them crumble in the reader’s hands.
20 Mutant Garden
Opening the door emits a puff of toxic spores from the fungal
infestation within. Anyone breathing within 20 meters of the
doorway must resist Powder Lung, a Toxicity 9, virulence 2
27
infestation with an interval of one hour. Each failed save adds a
-1 penalty to all hit rolls and physical skill checks from coughing,
wheezing, and respiratory congestion. Four failed saves means
death.

21 Comm Control Room

The system originally installed in the tomb actually has a
functioning FTL comm laser capable of penetrating Hard Light’s
background noise. In order to communicate via a comm laser,
however, the exact location of the target recipient must be known,
and the Chittik base in the system isn’t responding to queries. If
the PCs can figure out how to use the comm controls, however,
they’re likely to know enough to correctly locate Brightside Station
and open communications. Careful reading of the initial settings
might also clue the players in to the location of the long-abandoned
Chittik base in the system.

22 Dormitory
Banks of decaying Ushan hammocks depend from the ceiling to
serve any overflow of pilgrims.

23 Sculpture Garden
Pilgrims relaxed here and took the mineral powders they needed
amid these sculptures of glass and stone. The centerpiece is a
remarkable shimmerglass depiction of High Priest Amuran worth
1,000 credits if the PCs can lift and carry it out. Hauling it requires
a combined Strength score of 30.
28 Larder
The Chittik found it amusing to place their larder of Ushan meat
next to the High Priest’s burial chamber. Most of it has been eaten
since they have awoken, but a plastic-wrapped Ushan infant remains
on one shelf as a treat Tik-Bzurr was saving for later.

24 Food Powder Storage 29 Crypt of High Priest Amuran

Cases of the assorted mineral powders that Ushans need for
sustenance are stored here, along with decorative serving trays. The
minerals are fairly common and an Ushan requires no more than
a few ounces daily to maintain health, but the Ushans in room 29
have none at present.
The Chittik also tossed the pirate’s weaponry and armor in here,
none of it well-suited to Chittik use. Lying loose on a shelf are 35
rounds of ammunition, a revolver, three semiautomatic pistols, a
combat shotgun, an armored undersuit, two suits of woven armor,
and a combat field uniform. All are in somewhat ill-preserved
condition, and together they will require a few hours to clean,
polish, and mend to usefulness, with the exception of the revolver,
which will work perfectly well as-is.
25 Storerooms
Vestments, prisms, and other religious artifacts were kept in
these storerooms. Several of the artifacts are beautifully done in
shimmerglass, with the best three being worth 350 credits each.
26 Meditation Chamber
A pillar of brilliant crystal glitters with near-blinding radiance at
the center of this large meditation room. The floor is covered with
multiple crumbled, circular cushions.
27 Map Chamber
A pair of nobly-featured Ushan statues gaze down on the broken
stump of a defaced map table. No hint of tomb locations can be
gleaned from it.
28
The glass coffin of the high priest is empty now, and this high,
vaulted chamber has nothing more than the elaborate bas-reliefs
to adorn it. The surviving six Ushans have retreated here out of
a vague sense of safety. They are armed with three stolen Chittik
missile weapons, and have placed a large mirror at the crook of
the southern hallway to get warning of visitors. The crystal coffin
provides excellent cover should they need to shoot from behind it,
and three dead Chittik have been pushed to the far side of the room
as proof of their success thus far. A fountain on the far wall provides
water, and the room is well-lit as any of the other chambers, but
they lack the mineral powders the Ushans use as food, and will be
too weak to fight within a week.
The Ushans will be frightened of strangers, but humans look
enough like Ushans to somewhat disarm them. They are desperate
for help against the Chittik, and will attempt to convey the danger
and horror of the insect-people, as well as the fact that four of
their comrades have been captured already. The Ushans might be
convinced to fight alongside the PCs, but it would require deftly
convincing them both that the PCs were friends and that the PCs
had enough strength to overcome the Chittik. The Ushans speak no
English, complicating negotiation.
The leader of the Ushans is a young female who has named herself
Imaya, along with her three male companions Kettish, Ibram, and
Mettan, and the two other females Sadri and Loor. Imaya, Kettish,
and Ibram wield stolen Chittik projectile weapons, while the other
three carry clubs and crude cleavers. The Ushans know the horrors
that await prisoners, and will under no circumstances surrender.
Imaya: HP 10, Att +1/1d6+1 gun, AC 9, Save 14+, Morale 12
Ushans (5): HP 4, Att +0/1d6+1 gun or 1d4 club, AC 9, Save 15+,
Morale 12.
30 Forbidden Vault Entrance
This door to this vault antechamber can be opened with a keycard
kept by Tik-Bzurr or by a successful Security test at difficulty 9, one
attempt per PC. Within, a Chittik defense drone will power up one
round after the first attempt at picking the door lock; if the PCs
succeed on the first try, they’ll have one free round of action before
the robot comes alive. This drone is much like that listed in the
Cold Tombs, except its projectile weapon is fully functional.
Chittik Drone: HP 12, Att +5/1d10 gun, AC 5, Save 14+, Morale
12
31 Chamber of Imprecatory Cautions
The walls here are carved with stern Ushan figures and elaborate
warnings that the careless use of the contents of the vault may
imperil the user’s soul and risk placing him or her among the Eaters,
a mere beast in Ushan flesh.
32 Place of Spectral Forewarning
Figures that appear to be grotesque amalgams of Ushan and human
rise from the floor to gesture warningly at the intruders as they
intone promises of deadly peril for those who approach the contents
of the vault with an impure heart. The holoprojector algorithms
were programmed to interpolate the features of intruders with
randomly-generated older Ushans, giving the impression of their
own ancestors rising up to warn them away. Human faces confuse
the projector badly, and the shapes it conjures are more than a
little monstrous- and appear completely real, like all other Ushan
holograms.
33 Vault of the Sun Tower
Within this vault chamber, a simple golden ring a half-meter across
rests on a pedestal, four blunt feet on its lower side and a silvery
touch-strip along the top. The object is the Sun Tower, a marvelous
artifact designed by the High Priest and detailed at the end of the
section.
34 Medical Facilities
These few simple medical tools were little-used even before the tomb
was abandoned. An Ushan cutting torch is in one of the cabinets,
next to an Ushan power cell.
35 Guard Room
Chittik stand guard here to defend their leader. Tik-Bzurr and her
guards will not come to their aid should they hear combat outside,
but will instead prepare to make a last stand within her nest-
chamber.
Chittik (2): HP 5, Att +3/1d8 stun baton, AC 7/chitin, Save 15+,
Morale 10
36 Feeding Chamber
The tables here are spattered only with fruit juices and vegetable
husks, the Chittik having been long deprived of fresh meat.
37 Tik-Bzurr’s Lair
The leader of the Chittik nests here with her most trusted guardians.
If given less than five rounds to prepare, the trio will be standing
in the center of the room, Tik-Bzurr using the two other Chittik
as body shields as she fires on the PCs. If the players give her more
time to prepare before entering, however, she will have tipped over
synthetic furniture to form a firing barricade that will inflict -2 to
hit on anyone attempting to hit her or her guards with a ranged
attack. If the PCs have gotten this far, Tik-Bzurr abandons any hope
of taking them alive.
Several pieces of Chittik rank-jewelry are embedded in Tik-Bzurr’s
carapace, black and red jewels inset in a golden alloy. Marius
Rochambeau will pay 200 credits for it if the PCs pry it loose. A
pair of Ushan everlights adds further to the stark, functional interior
of her nest, with its sleeping platforms and a few synthetic tables.
Tik-Bzurr: HP 12, Att +4/1d6+1 gun, AC 7/chitin, Save 14+,
Morale 12
Chittik (2): HP 5, Att +3/1d6+1 gun, AC 7/chitin, Save 15+,
Morale 12
The Sun Tower
This exotic artifact was created by High Priest Amuran at the
height of his inventive powers. The device itself appears to be a
thin golden circlet one half meter in diameter, with five blunt
feet on the bottom side and a silver touchstrip on the top. When
the circle is placed on a flat surface and the strip is touched, a
billowing white radiance will begin to radiate from the artifact
and gradually harden into a tower of tangible white light over
the course of five minutes. The tower is fifty meters high and
ten in diameter, and is pierced with transparent windows and
a membrane-like “skin” over the entrance. A central “elevator”
column of light lifts occupants to the various floors, each of
which is outfitted with a number of white-light furnishings
appropriate to Ushan needs. The atmosphere inside the tower is
perpetually clean and breathable, and the internal temperature
remains steady and comfortable at any external range between
boiling lead and frozen nitrogen. The tower walls are as durable as
hull plating, and have Armor 10 against non-Gunnery weapons.
It takes 20 points of damage to knock a human-sized hole in a
wall. The tower remains up until the circlet at its base is moved
or deactivated, whereupon it slowly fades out over the course of
five minutes, gradually lowering its non-integral contents to the
earth. The Sun Tower requires no external power source.
While lovely and useful, it is exceedingly dangerous to activate
the Sun Tower in an enclosed space. If triggered in an area too
small to contain it, the tower will briefly pause in expanding, but
each round after the first, there is a 5% cumulative chance that
it will explosively collapse, doing 1d100 damage to any object or
person within ten meters of it, with half damage on a successful
Tech save. Each such collapse has a 20% cumulative chance of
burning out the Sun Tower. Marius Rochambeau is willing to
pay 15,000 credits for the artifact, as he sees it as his ticket off
Brightside Station.
29
Judgment Day
For fifty years, Yash Dutta has dodged the consequences of the
disaster he brought down on Geostellar Mining Industries. With
his embezzlement pinned on Jingfei Tang’s son Gui and the proof
of his theft conveniently mislaid, Dutta has slowly grown confident
that his only real peril is in failing to provide the bank with their
novium quota.
Two months ago, Roland Lomax was drinking in the pirate den of
Empty Grave when a table mate showed him a dataslab he’d picked
up from an abandoned system shuttle in Hard Light. According to
the pirate, the boat was an old GMI work boat that appears to have
fallen prey to the Beast’s radiation. The former pilot was a GMI
auditor who had discovered Dutta’s manipulations, and was trying
to rendezvous with a transport ship before it docked. He timed his
rendezvous poorly, and died from radiation poisoning before the
ship ever drilled in. The only point of interest to the pirate was
the fact that the auditor’s dataslab still functioned after fifty years
of emissions bombardment. Finding a lack of pornography on the
slate, he sold it to Lomax for the price of night with Gerta’s girls.
The pirate failed to understand what he had found, but Lomax
immediately realized what the numbers meant. If he could show
this to one of the auditors that always arrived with a bank transport
ship, Dutta would certainly be fired and ejected from the station.
If he arranged things properly beforehand, Roland Lomax would
be the only possible choice for his replacement. The next transport
in is due within two months, and Lomax plans to be ready when
it docks.
Judgment Day is a scenario that a GM can play out between
expeditions to the sky tombs. Pieces and elements of it can pop up
as PCs interact with station residents, the whole coming to a head
as the transport ship approaches. If the PCs do nothing to interfere
with his plans, Lomax is very likely to succeed in usurping Dutta.
Successfully resolving the situation in favor of whatever director the
PC group chooses to back awards each character 750 XP.
Lomax’s Allies
The cargo chief has busied himself with building a power base among
the other personnel over the past few years, but this new evidence
has pushed him to work more openly to enlist supporters. Dutta
doesn’t take the man seriously and is likely to pay for it. Several
station chiefs would currently welcome a Lomax administration.
Technical Chief Jaffa Okoye has had promises from Lomax that
he’ll find some reason to make sure Randall Bellows is forced to
leave the station. The claustrophobic tech chief is desperate to get
off Brightside Station, but she won’t leave without her “true love”-
and Bellows shows few signs of any quick departure.
Marius Rochambeau, the representative for the Stoltmann & Haar
research corporation, also wants to get off Brightside Station, but
he can’t do that until he’s got something marvelous to show his
superiors, something that would require his personal presence to
deliver and explain. Dutta has no interest in Marius’ wishes, but
Lomax has promised to assign a team of Brightside workers to tomb
exploration.
30
Randall Bellows, Jaffa’s male escort and beloved, is willing to
support Lomax. He knows the cargo chief is ready to bribe him to
leave. Lomax also knows Bellows plans to simply peel and dump
Jaffa as soon as they’re somewhere convenient for his disappearance,
but he sees no reason to disillusion the technical chief.
Mining Chief Mary Tomlinson considers Lomax a slimy toad, but
takes him for a fundamentally weak man whom she can control.
She’s bitter towards Dutta for the relentless work schedules of late
and the injury her arm suffered in fulfilling his quotas. She doesn’t
recognize the ruthlessness beneath the fat man’s unctuous exterior
or his willingness to kill to get his way.
Aside from these NPCs, Lomax can also count on the firm support
of thirty of the miners and technicians, with tentative approval from
another 20 workers. None of the cargo handlers or workers at the
Locker will have anything to do with him; they know him too well.
Other workers have heard rumors about him being a bad boss, but
Lomax blames it all on the help, and most of the miners are fed up
with Dutta’s increasing quota demands.
Dutta’s Supporters
Yash Dutta is an institution on Brightside Station, the Director
ever since it was built fifty years ago. Half of the personnel on
Brightside were born here, and have never known any other leader.
He’s weathered threats and potential mutinies before, but the past
decade of quiet and his own advancing age have left him careless of
the threat building around him.
Security Chief Livingston Roy is Dutta’s strongest supporter, and
the most important. He is an expert combatant and his twelve
security staffers are all firmly loyal to him. As a boy, he was trapped
in the refinery during a buffer fluid spill and would have died had
Dutta not risked his own life to save him. His loyalty to Dutta is
beyond reproach, and Dutta trusts him implicitly.
Medical Chief Suyin Indrani is also a firm supporter, though more
out of loathing toward Lomax than enthusiasm for Dutta. The
cargo chief has abhorrent appetites and an unforgivable habit of
contempt toward her girls and boys. Alone of the station chiefs, she
recognizes the ugly core of malevolence in Lomax, but the other
chiefs just tend to chalk it up to Suyin’s known tenderness about the
monetary aspects of her trade.
The owner of the Midnight Sun bar, Marion Hardlee, is also in
favor of Dutta’s continued rule, though much of that comes from
Lomax’s obvious and burning resentment toward her alcohol
monopoly on the station. If he were ever to become director, she
expects her livelihood would shortly vanish. By extension, her
husband Ranse the shuttle pilot also has a vested interest in Dutta’s
continuing good offices.
Among the remaining staffers, Dutta has a hard core of support
consisting of 20 workers, with another 20 modestly enthusiastic
about him. Most of his supporters are cargo handlers, office workers,
and maintenance techs. He’s not a popular man with the miners.
Lomax’s Preparations
Dutta lets Lomax sell a few guns at The Locker for those planning
on exploring the sky tombs. Unbeknownst to Dutta, Lomax has
laid in a substantial supply of firearms and ammunition. His work
as cargo chief makes it easy for him to smuggle in the weapons and
store them where it won’t be found. Cases containing two dozen
shotguns, 2,000 rounds of ammunition and ten suits of woven
armor have been planted in the cargo hold under the emergency
rations. Station files list the crates of “religious texts” as belonging
to a fictional trading company that never came to pick them up; if
discovered, Dutta will suspect Lomax but won’t have clear proof of
his culpability.
Lomax has been circulating among his supporters, advising them
that if “a situation arises”, he’ll need their support. To his less
committed supporters, he’s played down any talk of violence or
mutiny, assuring them that “an orderly process” will be followed
and mentioning Dutta’s long years of service and need for a
respectable retirement. To the hard core, he’s had fewer comforting
words, painting it as a coming struggle for their freedom and decent
treatment.
Rumors fly aboard the station, and even players are apt to overhear
talk about Lomax’s conversations, as if he were expecting something
big to happen soon. Lomax himself is likely to approach the players
to sound them out about their feelings about Dutta, playing up
his complete control over the station and how hard the miners are
worked. If they show signs of a mercenary inclination, he might
consider trying to enlist them as guards. Unarmed ones, of course,
until the proper moment. Lomax is not a trusting man, and he
won’t readily tip his hand to strangers. He especially won’t reveal
the location of the dataslab, currently hidden inside a maintenance
panel in the umbilical dock.
Suyin Indrani is likely to be the first to contact players from Dutta’s
faction. She’ll encourage them to get inside Lomax’s plans and
find out what it is that he’s expecting, as well as to talk to people
to find out where they stand. She’ll mention Lomax’s monthly
trips to Empty Grave as being suspicious, but note that Ranse
Hardlee doesn’t care to take people out there, and any visit would
immediately tip Lomax off that the PCs are likely working against
him. That, and there’s no telling what Lomax might be willing to do
when outside the station’s laws.
If players can convince Livingston Roy that they’re on Dutta’s side,
the security chief can quietly get them access to almost any locked
area on the ship, barring the novium storage bay. Roy can’t blatantly
break the regulations in favor of the PCs without incurring even
more unrest, but he had his security personnel can develop the
occasional useful fit of blindness or negligence.
If the players come out openly against Lomax, the cargo chief will
start to sweat. Adventurers are notoriously violent and unpredictable
people, and he’s not sure just what the PCs would be willing to
do. A few local bruisers will be enlisted to punch a little discretion
into the PCs. Roy can arrest them for brawling and assault, but the
thugs will take care not to do more than break a few bones. This is
unlikely to dissuade the PCs, but Lomax’s nerves will start to force
him into mistakes as events come to a head.
A Situation Out of Hand
If everything goes smoothly, the novium transport will arrive in
two months. As usual, a bank auditor will be aboard to check the
station’s books. Lomax will present the auditor with the dataslab.
The auditor won’t require more than an hour to sort out Dutta’s
involvement, and will immediately order the transport’s captain to
arrest and imprison Dutta aboard the ship. Livingston Roy and his
men would be willing to fight to prevent this, but Dutta would
order them to stand down. The director is old, tired, and will not
want Roy to die for his sins.
The bank auditor will take a vote among the station crew, and
Lomax will win as temporary director, a position the bank will
confirm with the next transport to arrive. For the first four months
Lomax will appear to be a much more clement boss, until the next
novium transport finds production down 30%. Lomax will be
informed that he either gets the production up or gets exiled, and
he’ll respond with a brutal work regime worse than anything Dutta
imposed. Workers will be enslaved, Lomax’s favorites will become
prison guards, and the station will spiral down into a festering
hellhole within the year. Those opposed to Lomax will be subject
to his loathsome tastes, and anyone not smart enough to get off the
station with the next transport after his promotion is going to regret
it. The station itself will likely collapse inside two years, possibly
explosively.
Of course, the player actions are likely to complicate this tidy
scenario. If the players bring proof of Empty Graves’ nature as a
pirate den, Lomax will be disgraced. Jaffa Okoye and Randall
Bellows will still stick with him, but mostly out of desperation
or greed, respectively. Tomlinson will realize that Indrani was
right about Lomax’s malevolence, and Marius Rochambeau will
reconsider the value of Lomax’s promises. Only 20 of his hard-core
workers will still support him- not enough to win the election for
interim director. Mary Tomlinson will be elected.
If the dataslab is stolen or destroyed, Lomax will have no proof,
and be unable to give the evidence to the auditor. Even if the slab
is simply stolen and not destroyed, his frustration will overwhelm
his patience.
For whatever reason, if Lomax is not acting director by the time
the transport ship leaves, he’ll launch an open rebellion. Only his
hard-core supporters among the miners will fight for him. Okoye,
Bellows, Tomlinson, and Rochambeau have no intention of getting
in a gunfight. A few of Dutta’s supporters might fight back, but
they’re largely armed only with improvised weaponry. Livingston
Roy and the security staffers will be his main opponents, as will
Suyin Indrani, who is an unusually good shot herself. Marion and
Ranse Hardlee will just want to keep their heads down.
If Lomax defeats Dutta’s supporters in open combat, things will
degenerate much more rapidly. Lomax will need to produce
huge amounts of novium to convince the bank to accept this fait
accompli, and those who failed to fight for him will be enslaved
by those who did. Copious examples will be made of resisters, and
within a year the station will have collapsed into bloody anarchy.
31
Nothing But Trouble
Lomax’s machinations and the mysteries of the sky tombs are all
useful diversions for PCs, but it can occasionally be tricky getting
them involved in these situations. Included here are a number of
hooks for snaring PCs into the adventure.
Arriving on Brightside Station
There are a number of ways the characters can end up on Brightside
Station. The default assumption of the adventure is that PCs don’t
have access to a ship of their own, so with that in mind, here are a
few ways to get them aboard the station:
• The PCs are hired as security staff for a novium transport. When
the ship arrives at Brightside Station, several badly-injured miners
need to be taken off and the players are left behind to make room.
The transport captain promises them passage back on the ship’s next
trip, and arranges with Dutta to give them free room and board
until then. If you choose this hook, Lomax is at Empty Graves when
the transport comes in, discovering the data slab that will set his
plan in motion.
• The PCs are commissioned by a wealthy industrialist to get him
two novium ingots to repair a damaged pretech mold. He’ll provide
passage in on a tramp freighter and will send it back two months
later to pick up the PCs and the novium, along with up to 8,000
credits in payment for the novium. Anything the players don’t
spend in acquiring the ingots, they can keep. Dutta doesn’t want to
sell any novium outside the bank’s contract, however, and will want
some favors done to convince him otherwise.
• The PCs find a fifty-year-old share of ownership stock in Brightside
Station. Some financial research shows that the bank foreclosed on
the station 50 years ago, but that the stock can still be redeemed for
a portion of the station’s assessed value- which nowadays, amounts
to 8,000 credits. They need to personally submit the share to the
director of the station, however, and Dutta hasn’t got that kind of
money lying around in petty cash. If the PCs help him out with a
few things, though, he can find the credits.
The Work Never Ends
Once aboard Brightside Station, the locals have plenty of their own
troubles to share with newcomers, and some people will find it
useful to ask for help from strangers who can be expected not to
understand exactly what it is they’re getting into. Here are a few
hooks that might turn up:
• The Beast has been unusually active this past month, and
Brightside Station has had to expend a lot of water as reaction
mass for its maneuver jets. They need to survey a new ice asteroid
ahead of schedule, and get it mined within three weeks or else the
hydroponic bay will die off. The PCs are hired for 500 credits apiece
to do the dangerous work of surveying the only feasible iceball. As
Ranse Hardlee comes up alongside it in the Leadbelly, the players
discover the exterior entrance to the Cold Tomb. They need to
explore it fully before the miners can safely start to cut in.
32
• Livingston Roy is smitten with Jaffa Okoye, but she only has eyes
for Randall Bellows. Roy is convinced that Bellows is up to no good,
and draws one of the PCs aside to offer 300 credits for proof that
Bellows is toying with Jaffa’s affections.
• Dutta’s having trouble with the refinery equipment, and it will be
months before a parts request can go out on the next transport. The
parts the refinery needs can probably be scavenged from a mining
ship, but Brightside Station doesn’t use manned mining boats, and
hasn’t for 50 years. The only one that was brought in was abandoned
after a maneuver jet failure, and it’s still floating out there in orbit
around the Beast. The frigate-sized system ship is now practically
glowing with radioactivity, but if the PCs go out there and navigate
the rusting, radioactive, somewhat explosive interior to salvage the
core filtration module, Dutta will pay them 500 credits apiece and
give them free room and board until the next transport comes.
• Notes found on a pirate corpse speak of the last voyage of the
Serpent’s Fang, a pirate ship destroyed in a nearby system some 19
years ago. The pirate had learned from an old tracking report that
the ship stopped briefly at what must have been a sky tomb before
rendezvousing with its doom. The pirate was convinced that it left a
cache of plunder there. Following his coordinates will bring the PCs
to the House of Echoes.
Trouble Comes To You
Of course, the wider world has a habit of intruding into even the
most isolated corners of the galaxy, and Brightside Station is no
exception. Here are a few unfortunate complications that can arise
for its citizenry:
• Shen Tang always knew that his grandmother had been ruined
by the machinations of Yash Dutta, even if he could never prove it.
His father was practically a beggar, but Tang has fought his way to
leadership of a pirate frigate. Now he’s ready to dock under the guise
of a badly-damaged free trader, debris still drifting from his hull.
Once he’s aboard, he and his men will attack the control room as a
fragment of debris outside turns out to be a hull-clamped maneuver
jet. The jet will fire briefly, putting Brightside on course to leave
Aegis’ shadow in 72 hours. If Dutta doesn’t surrender the station
to Shen Tang within that time, the pirate will cheerfully allow its
crew to be irradiated by the Beast as the raiders finish plundering
the station and departing in their own ship. Resisters will need to
recapture the control room to fire the Brightside’s maneuver jets, or
else engage in risky outside operations to manually trigger them.
• One of Lomax’s people sabotages the refinery to force a slowdown of
production- but he’s too effective, and the buffer fluid contaminates
the ship’s atmosphere filters. Round-the-clock work by the techs
is holding back the station from disaster, but there’s no more than
two or three weeks before the filters are totally compromised and
the Brightside becomes a radioactive tomb. The PCs need to get
a hundred people off of Brightside before the station becomes
uninhabitable, and will probably have to find a suitable sky tomb
in time for the Leadbelly to get the station crew and supplies over
there. Meanwhile, Lomax is using “the accident” to condemn Dutta
for pushing the equipment too hard.
 NPC Combat Statistics
Below are combat statistics for some of the important NPCs and
Yash Dutta
enemy types found in Hard Light. The statistics given are their
normal equipment when found by PCs. Those NPCs without HP: 16 AC: 7/undersuit Skill: +3 Morale: 10
special entries should use the ordinary worker stats for combat. Atk: +4/1d6 laser pistol Save: 13+
Dutta’s main skills are financial and interpersonal, though he’s been
Livingston Roy in combat before and knows how to use a laser pistol. One of Roy’s
HP: 20 AC: 7/undersuit Skill: +3 Morale: 12 security people guards him at all times.
Atk: +5/1d4+1 knife Save: 13+
Chittik Monitor
Roy has limited actual combat experience, but is expert at containing
rowdy miners. During an actual mutiny, he’ll don a combat field HP: 5 AC: 7/chitin Skill: +1 Morale: 9
uniform (AC 4) and pick up a combat shotgun (+5/3d4 damage). Atk: +3/1d4 claw or 1d6+1 gun Save: 15+
Some Chittik were assigned to monitor the pilgrims that visited the
Randall Bellows sky tombs, and given cold sleep pods to hold them between arrivals.
HP: 8 AC: 9 Skill: +2 Morale: 6 These monitors will awaken when the tomb is opened, and while
briefly disoriented, they will be amply ready to attack invaders.
Atk: +2/1d4 knife Save: 15+ They use their claws in combat, or alien Chittik guns with a range of
Randall cares for nothing beyond his own skin and his own profit, 20/40, 4 rounds per magazine, and 1d6+1 damage on a hit. Chittik
and will fight only if his life is at stake. usually carry 20 rounds of ammunition, and Marius Rochambeau
will pay 50 credits for each Chittik gun brought to him.
Ranse Hardlee
HP: 12 AC: 9 Skill: +3 Morale: 8 Ordinary Brightside Worker
Atk: +2/1d4 knife Save: 15+ HP: 4 AC: 9 Skill: +1 Morale: 7
Ranse is a canny old system pilot and expert at flying the Leadbelly. Atk: +0/1d2 fists Save: 15+
He avoids risking his neck whenever possible, but he has a suit Most of Brightside’s population are fairly skilled at their particular
of woven armor (AC 5) and laser rifle (+3/1d10 damage) in his field from long practice, and all of them are very familiar with
quarters. spacer life and exosuit use. They aren’t usually much as combatants,
however, and take a -2 hit penalty when using weapons.
Roland Lomax
HP: 20 AC: 9 Skill: +3 Morale: 11 Pirate Scum
Atk: +4/1d6+1 pistol Save: 13+ HP: 3 AC: 9 Skill: +1 Morale: 8
Lomax gives an impression of oozing, unctuous camaraderie to his Atk: +2/1d6+1 pistol Save: 15+
acquaintances, but he’s a hard man beneath who knows how to use Pirates are a ruthless lot, and will wear woven armor (AC 5) if they
the pistol he carries. He’ll break out a shotgun (+4/3d4 damage) have it to hand when they expect trouble.
and a suit of woven armor (AC 5) from The Locker if things get
ugly.
Security Staff
HP: 3 AC: 7/undersuit Skill: +1 Morale: 9
Shen Tang
Atk: +2/1d8 stun baton Save: 15+
HP: 25 AC: 7/undersuit Skill: +3 Morale: 11
One of Roy’s twelve security staffers, four of which are on duty
Atk: +5/1d4 knife Save: 13+ at any given time. They prefer to use stun batons on brawlers an
This pirate chief will quickly don woven armor (AC 5) and snatch other unarmed trouble, but they have pistols (+2/1d6+1 damage)
up a combat rifle (+6/1d12 damage) before beginning his crew’s for armed assailants.
attack on the station.
Thug
Suyin Indrani HP: 4 AC: 9 Skill: +1 Morale: 8
HP: 15 AC: 9 Skill: +2 Morale: 9 Atk: +2/1d2+2 fists Save: 15+
Atk: +5/1d6+1 pistol Save: 13+ Some Brightsiders have more aptitude for violence than others.
While ostensibly just a frontier physician and madame, Indrani Roland Lomax is likely to enlist thugs like this one for his plans.
spent eight years as a medic in a merc unit. She has her old combat While they have limited combat experience, they take no hit penalty
field uniform (AC 4) and combat rifle (+5/1d12 damage) in her when using weapons.
quarters, and she’ll use them if the station is attacked.

33
Brightside Lowdeck and Middeck

34
 Brightside Highdeck

Map Key
Lowdeck Middeck Highdeck
L1 Gear Locker M1 Armory H1 Backup Bridge
L2 Prep Room M2 Clouds and Rain H2 Chapel
L3 Pressure Dock M2A-F Clouds and Rain Private Rooms H3 Fusion Plant
L4 Processing Filter Bay M2C Suyin Indrani’s Quarters H4 Heavenly Hash Cafeteria
L5 Refinery Intake M3 Medical Clinic H4A Kitchen Area
L6 Smelter M3A Intensive Care H5 Hydroponic Bay
L7 Station Bridge M3B Cold Sleep Pods H6 Park Plaza
L8 Umbilical Dock M4 Public Lavatories H7 Public Rest Rooms
L9 Warehouse M5 Station Offices H8 Transient Housing
L10 Workshop M5A Yash Dutta’s Office H9A Yash Dutta’s Quarters
M5B Livingston Roy’s Office H9B Livingston Roy’s Quarters
EL Elevators M5C Mary Tomlinson’s Office H9C Roland Lomax’s Quarters
M6 The Locker H9D Mary Tomlinson’s Quarters
M6A The Locker Storage H9E Jaffa Okoye’s Quarters
M7 The Midnight Sun
M8 Theater Unmarked rooms are residences.
M9 Maintenance Rooms

35
Tomb Geomorphs
Entrances
1 2 3 4 5 6

Corridors and Rooms

1 2 3 4 5 6

36

Hard Light
Primary Star Perdurabo, aka “The Beast”
Major Worlds None
Main Starport Brightside Station
Government None
System Overview
Hard Light is dominated by its primary, a late-stage
red giant known locally as “The Beast”. Most of the
system interior has already been consumed by the star’s
expansion, leaving it with a thick penumbra of rocky
debris. There are no habitable worlds in the system.
The only registered settlement is the Brightside mining
station, with approximately one hundred inhabitants and
basic facilities for ship refueling and repair.
Points of Interest
Brightside Station is the only registered settlement
within Hard Light. The station is built along the familiar
Bannerjee Twelve structural lines and is located in a stable
orbital position on the dark side of the planetoid Aegis.
Facilities are provided for refueling and minor repairs.
Pressure bay capacity is available for most frigate-class
ships or smaller, while larger ships can be served through
a cargo umbilical. Brightside welcomes all traders, but
recommends early notification of arrival by comm laser.
The station is heavily armed and prepared to repel pirates
and boarders.
Brightside Station’s major industry is the export of novium,
a rare particle emitted by late-stage red giants that has
numerous uses in the maintenance of pretech manufactory
equipment. The novium production is currently under
long-term contract, but traders are welcome to make port
for refueling, resupply, and relaxation. Work at good pay
is available for experienced spacers and technicians.
Visitors may also be interested in exploring the recently-
discovered “sky tombs” embedded in several large asteroids
along the outer rim of the system. These alien excavations
appear to have served as burial sites for important members
of their species, and some contain valuable works of art or
ancient xenotech. Buyers are present aboard the Brightside
for quick and profitable disposal of interesting artifacts.
System registry information prepared by Livingston Roy, Chief of Security, Brightside Station
System Registry
Local Laws
No formal law enforcement exists outside of Brightside
Station. Traders should look to their own security.
The wearing of armor or weaponry is forbidden aboard
Brightside Station. Station rules are enforced by
uniformed security personnel. Visitors are advised to
obey their instructions and all posted regulations. We
welcome traders in need of a good time and relaxation,
but we expect you to behave while you are here.
Troublemakers will be ejected from the station. Very bad
troublemakers will be ejected from the airlock.
Director Yash Dutta is chief of Brightside Station.
Visitors interested in finding work are advised to apply
to him at the station offices on middeck.
Travel Warnings!
Radio communication in the system is severely
degraded by stellar emissions and is infeasible at
ranges of more than twelve meters. Comm lasers
or spooled comm hardline are recommended for
communication.
Standard ship radiation shielding systems degrade
rapidly in Hard Light. Seventy-two hours is the
maximum recommended exposure period, after which
most crews will begin to experience significant radiation
poisoning. Full crew mortality can be anticipated within
24 hours. Sheltering aboard Brightside Station or in the
shadow of a major asteroid is recommended to allow
the shielding buffer time to regenerate.
Crew are strongly advised not to perform extra-
vehicular activities in open space. Without the
shielding provided by a major asteroid, significant
radiation poisoning requires only sixty seconds for
onset, with death following within twenty minutes. In
emergency situations, use of engine room-rated exosuits
can delay significant damage for several hours.
Visitors are advised to avoid exploration of the
asteroid fields in unarmed starships. Some of the sky
tombs have been repurposed as hermit settlements and
pirate dens. Enlist a local guide to learn the locations of
sky tombs known to be secure for exploration.